Skype update for iOS, Android good news for other apps

Microsoft has been making several dedicated attempts to make Skype a useful tool rather than an unnecessary legacy add-on of late, with real-time translation being the most headline-grabbing update rolling in. Now Skype is announcing a few upgrades for Android users, with offline photo sharing coming via an update. Now Skype users can send photos to friends who may be offline, which will be immediately viewable once that user logs back onto Skype. Skype for Android also has some other neat tricks, like running in the background while you use other apps.

In addition to sending photos to friends who aren't around to receive them, you can also leave Skype while you're in a video call. Doing so will keep your chat in a small window on-screen, so you can keep chatting away while you play games or find something to share in a chat.

Skype's iOS app was also improved, but has more to do with redirecting users to Skype rather than in-app upgrades. For iOS, Skype will support Uniform resource Identifiers (URI) again. That will allow Developers to create Skype links in their apps to launch voice or video calls without having to support it natively.

Though it still lacks several bells and whistles other chat apps have, Skype is coming around quickly. For those who prefer Skype over other chat applications — and do so via a mobile device — these upgrades will prove quite popular.

Source: Microsoft