Apple Thoughts: Skype Arrives With Some Limitations

Well, the day has come. Shortly after hell froze over, Skype's app for the iPhone was released. It's actually pretty cool and the voice quality is on par with what you'd get from the desktop version of skype. The screen grab above is from an active call I made after installing it this morning, and as you can see it bears more than a passing resemblance to the iPhone's built-in phone app. Not too shabby, right?

There are limitations, though. You can't initiate a conference call from the iPhone, you can't make calls over anything but WiFi (thanks AT&T, really), and you can't send files or use the integrated SMS like the desktop client offers (again, thanks AT&T). The biggest limitation, of course, is that it won't run in the background. As Ptyork from the forums pointed out, without that, your chances of realtime call notification are basically nill unless the push notification system is super fast. Guess that one we'll just have to wait and see on.

Overall, it's worth a download if you use Skype regularly. Just the amount of outgoing calls I make make this one worth having in the ole toolkt.

(One slight clarification; yesterday when I used the term rumor, I meant the release date not the actual app!)