New Look, New Features: Skype Is Back

The audio-video chat service, instant messenger Skype, is getting a significant update. This is colorful and playful and is aimed at private users. Skype isn’t still alive. After Microsoft hasn’t yet paid much attention to Instant Messenger lately because development was focused on its in-house competing product teams, the manufacturer wants a veritable firework of features for the Skype client and the one behind it this fall burn lying service.

Skype Is Supposed To Be The Solution For The Private

One thing is apparent at first glance: Skype is no longer intended for use in a corporate environment. Instead, Microsoft wants to position the service in the private sphere, which is becoming more colorful and playful. This seems logical at first glance, but it is still surprising given that Teams has also received many features for remote users in recent months. The new Skype should be “fast, playful, attractive, and soft as butter.” At least that’s what the manufacturer promises in a very detailed blog post that hypes even the slightest change to the UI into a veritable design coup.

Prettier And With More Comfort

The new interface is nicely done and backed with some brain power. In particular, the so-called call stage looks perfect, i.e., the view displayed during an ongoing video call. Unlike competing solutions, Microsoft has managed to combine video participants with pure audio participants in a meaningful way, along with a chat that doesn’t appear flanged. Keeping the user in the center of the stage is also a good solution for user comfort. Most of the changes can be described as improvements in comfort. In some areas, however, Skype is only catching up with other solutions, such as Zoom. The animated backgrounds or the “meeting rooms” where the participants are virtually displayed next to each other should be mentioned here.

Real Innovations Sparse

Genuine innovations remain manageable. For example, Skype under Windows will have the “Meet Now” function, which makes it possible to organize spontaneous meetings so that people can quickly and easily join sessions lasting up to 45 minutes without registering. Also important is the function of turning a smartphone camera into an additional camera in the call using the twin cam feature. For example, participants could capture events on-site with a different camera and stream them into the ring. Microsoft proposes the function to show others what their dog is doing for capers.

Grandparents could be happy about the latest walking progress of their grandchild. Also new is a simultaneous translator, which should allow people of different languages ​​​​to communicate with each other. In addition to features and design, the new Skype should run up to 30 percent faster on the desktop and up to 2,000 percent faster on Android. The updates will be rolled out over the coming months and run as usual on all common OS platforms and in the Edge, Chrome, Opera, and Safari browsers. This is the first significant update to the service since 2018. Last summer, Microsoft tried to cut the classic version of Skype but was forced to postpone the end after receiving a multitude of protests from users.

During these months, version 8 of Skype has been refined, and today the only one that can be used. “We occasionally retire older versions of Skype to introduce new features, improve existing ones and fix bugs. When this happens, you will no longer be able to use Skype unless you upgrade to the latest version,” the Skype team responded to a Windows report .com request for clarification.

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