So I’ve been playing around with the Skype Android app over the past two months or so and it’s a lot better than it was. First off, and a big first – you can now save the app to SD, the lack of which beforehand had many users including myself uninstalling the app for sheer lack of space on the internal memory. But not only that its now got a leaner, cleaner UI. It handles faster, smoother and more reliably. Yet, there are still a few kinks which I feel could be ironed out. Here’s my take on it.
Tab system and notifications
To start with, in comparison with Google Talk for Android, I still feel the tabbing system is a little too clunky and could be reduced further down getting rid of the ‘Events’ tab moving events to Android’s on board notifications system (à la Google Talk). I’m not so sure a history of events is needed on a phone, or can be instead inserted into the person’s chat (scrolling back through the past to see chat history and events).
My info
I’ve relabelled the ‘My Info’ tab to ‘Skype Credit’, putting the user’s status across all the tab screens. This hands the user more control over their immediate information. It also doesn’t really fit in well with Skype Credit information and feels as if it’s just been added on. Ability to edit profile information is located in the menu button.
Menu system
One of my major irks with the current design, is the menu displayed when the menu button is activated. This menu changes from tab to tab and wrests control from the user, forcing the user to search for basic information such as the ability to log out. When I first used it and attempted to log out, the menu button on the ‘Contacts’ tab (the main home tab for most people) revealed only the ability to add people and manage groups. Not even task killers sign out of Skype. It took a bit of guess work to realise the menus might be different on each tab with ‘sign out’ hidden in ‘My Info’.
There also seems to be repetition in some of the menu items and the features included on the front facing UI, such as selecting contacts from your phone’s contact list on the ‘Contacts’ tab.
