Ina Fried

Recent Posts by Ina Fried

Skype for Windows Phone No Longer a Beta, but Still Missing Some Key Features

Microsoft is taking the beta tag off its version of Skype for Windows Phone.

With the move, Microsoft’s Internet calling service is now no longer as much of a second-class citizen on Microsoft’s own devices.

Microsoft completed its $8.5 billion purchase of Skype last October, but until this February’s Mobile World Congress there wasn’t even a beta version of the software for Windows Phone.

As of Sunday, Skype for Windows Phone has earned the official 1.0 moniker.

That doesn’t mean that the software is necessarily on par with its Android and iPhone counterparts, however. A key limitation, as noted by the Verge, is that Skype can’t run in the background. So you can’t stay on a call — or even receive one — unless Skype is the application in the foreground of the phone.

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I think the NSA has a job to do and we need the NSA. But as (physicist) Robert Oppenheimer said, “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you’ve had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.”

— Phil Zimmerman, PGP inventor and Silent Circle co-founder, in an interview with Om Malik