Well it's finally out and it came so quickly. After months of thinking it would never happen I found news that Skype would be available only yesterday. Yesterdays news said it would be available today and yesterdays news was right! So this morning I checked my iPhone and saw Skype was available from the App Store. I couldn't wait to test it.
Update: The crashing has been fixed and only affected jailbroken iPhones. The problem was not Skype and was remedied by upgrading the Mobile Substrate packed via Cydia.
I need Skype for my phone because?
A lot of people have been asking why use Skype from a phone, you could make a phone call from a phone. True but I use Skype more than I use a phone. A phone call is for me used only for quick meaningful conversations. The only person I spend lengthy amounts (hours and hours) of time speaking to is my girlfriend and since she is currently based in Japan that would mean lots and lots of money for a phone call that has inferior quality. Besides anyone who already has a use for Skype may like the idea of a more portable version of Skype rather than the current one that requires them to lug their laptop around.
Is it any good?
So established need/want/desire aside what exactly is this Skype iPhone app like? The first word that comes to mind is disappointing, the second word is disappointing and the third word, well that's disappointing too. You can already tell rave reviews are not ahead right?
What's wrong?
Firstly the crashing. I used the app for all of five minutes, it crashed four times. That is certainly what I would call buggy. It crashed when browsing menu's, it crashes when leaving it online, it crashes, when a few seconds into a call. Secondly is the poor call quality. Why is it that every portable version of Skype sounds bad? The PSP version, the N95 version, the N800 version. All of them sound very noticeably different from their desktop counter part.
What's right?
The user interface. It's wonderful, very clean and polished. Indeed it's well thought out. It looks and feels like a proper iPhone app and does not try to be unique but fit in with the Apple standards. It comes with a decent amount of features such as being able to edit your entire profile from the app. You can even use a picture from you library or take a new one with the phones camera to set as your profile icon.
Finally...
I like the app yet its totally unusable for me in its current state of perpetual crashing. Also the lack of decent call quality means I can't seriously use it. Perhaps if the crashing is fixed I could use the Skype out feature to save money on the phone calls I make but until then I'm looking forward to the next release which I hope will address the issues I am having
