Skype, an original video and text chatting service, has floundered of late. It’s a mis-hit on the desktop, and arguably terrible on mobile. It does a lot wrong, which Skype readily admits. In a blog post, they vow a better mobile experience, and true cross-platform functionality.
With a new CEO focussed on the mobile experience, Skype — a Microsoft service — is pushing for better mobile functionality. Via a blog post, they’re highlighting improvements to push notifications, which they say will help when you migrate from one platform or device to another. Read messages will show as read across all devices, and new messages will populate similarly.
On mobile, Skype is also making improvements to battery life, startup time, and resume lag. “We’ve improved load times for the app and for recent conversations; in addition, it’s now faster to return to the app when it’s not running in the foreground as well as faster to start up, allowing you to chat all day every day without the fear of unwanted battery drain.” These tweaks fix a few major issues with Skype, in that it was heavy and cumbersome for mobile.
Additionally, the Skype team is saying you’ll be getting notifications on the device you’re using at the time, not all of them. If you’re using your phone, you’ll get notifications of new messages there, and not everywhere else. How that will perform when migrating from device to device remains to be seen.
