Regular Skype users throughout the Android world have been looking to alternative apps to connect to the popular messaging client for sometime because of the battery life when using the official app because, well… it sucks!
With the release of Skype version 4.7 for Android, your battery can let out a large sigh of relief. The official Skype blog states:
With Skype 4.7 for Android, we are introducing aggressive battery savings that will allow most of our users to leave Skype running without noticeably affecting battery life. It has been a challenging process, because to do this we’ve had to transform to the way Skype technology works.
Having used the updated version for the last couple of days now, I agree with this statement for the most part. The battery life is much improved on the latest version of Skype for Android, enough so that I would reasonably seriously consider leaving it running in the background pretty much full time. The only problem comes when you do send and receive a lot of messages in a day and you’re looking for that elusive power point at 4 pm to get you home.
The other notable improvement with the latest version of Skype is the Kitkat fix which, if you fell victim to the bug, would cause an open process lock (i.e. your camera always on) and kill your battery in roughly 2 – 3 hours. So the update is very welcome to regular users and frankly, a little overdue. You can grab the updated app on the Play Store by hitting the link below.
Were you forced to head for an alternative app to avoid the horrible battery issues, or have you just moved over to our beloved Google Hangouts?
