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Skype for Android update promises to make your battery life suck less

Skype has today had updated its Android app with a handful of new features and bug fixes. In a blog post, Skype explains that it was been working diligently over the last year to greatly improve the battery with the app, and that today’s update finally does so. The update introduces “aggressive battery savings” that will make the app have little to no effect on your device’s battery life.

The company says that it in order to improve battery life, it had to completely transform the way the Skype technology works and that this transformation is not entirely complete yet. One instance of this is that for time being, Skype has turned off instant notifications of messages in group chats. The company hopes to release another update soon that re-enable them with little battery impact. For now, however, you can enable them by going to Settings > Notifications > and choosing the “Sync group messages in the background” box. Although, this will impact your battery life.

The update also improves stability on KitKat, in addition to fixing audio and video calling on tablets without BlueTooth.

  • Workaround for the KitKat bug which caused a runaway process when the camera was synced in the background.
  • Fix for audio and video calling on tablets that do not have Bluetooth.
  • Now lists your Windows Live Messenger contacts in the Skype (default) view, not just the All contacts view.

The update is available on the Play Store now and bumps the app to version 4.7.

 

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