Tech giant Microsoft has launched an optimised version of Skype for low end Android devices. In 2017, Skype reached a milestone of over one billion downloads in the Play Store and was selected as a top Editors’ Choice for face-to-face video calling apps.
The new optimised version is light on both disk and memory consumption, allows for greater speed and improved audio and video quality on low end Android devices, as well as increased performance in restricted network areas, the company said.
The update will be rolled out globally in the coming weeks. If you have not received the update yet, you can try the latest version of Skype for Android by signing up for Skype Insiders Programme.
Skype for Android follows the same approach as Google’s Android Oreo ‘Go Edition’ -- an optimised version of Android Oreo tailored for smartphones with 1GB of RAM or less. With a smaller amount of storage and processing power, these phones are less expensive for manufacturers to produce and can be sold at affordable prices, in some cases less than $50.
This is not the first time that a communications app is following this path. In October of 2017, Facebook rolled out Messenger Lite for Android which is an optimised version of main app and also cuts on some of the features from the regular app. Last year, in September Twitter also introduced a lite version of its mobile site that uses less data.
The optimised version of apps that require less data and performance power is useful around the world, especially in India and other emerging markets where the latest models of phones either are not available or affordable.
