It quite quickly drains your battery though when running. And it'll ring and vibrate whenever you get an IM message, even when you are at your computer chatting and thus aware of the IM conversation going on.
For these two reasons, I personally don't run skype in the background
Strange, after a certain amount of time (20 minutes ? more ?), I just don't receive skype calls anymore on the iphone, even when the app is in the foreground.
If I make a skype call, I can now receive calls/IM for some time, even in the background.
I believe that in iOS, priority is given to recently used applications. When RAM dwindles, low priority applications are flat out killed. Source? This is going off my vague recollection of the background process flowchart PDF someone posted a while ago.
This is my entirely unsupported understanding as well, but I've seen it happen when using backgrounder. On low memory conditions, background apps were killed.
Skype has a setting to sign-off after a certain period of time when it runs in the background, and the default non-infinite setting is most likely what you're seeing.
I'd like to point out that it cannot "only be used on the Verizon network". It works just fine on any network in the UK, however, they limit which handsets you can download the installer on. There's nothing stopping you getting the APK from someone else and installing it, but I wouldn't bother. The app really is terrible.
Artificially limiting their market aside, here's some of the highlights:
There are no options. Seriously. None. Good luck configuring anything about the behaviour of the app.
It's huge. I don't have it installed right now but I believe it takes up more than 20MB, which is seriously bloated for a glorified IM application.
You can't view just your online contacts, or order by status. I have a LOT of contacts, and at any given time maybe 10 to 20 are online. Finding them is a complete pain.
If you open an IM with someone, it populates the window with your last chats, just like the other clients. However, it loads a very large amount of your history with them, which takes a long time to populate the window, and it does this every time you switch to that IM "window", making the IM completely unusable.
I grabbed a hacked version of Skype that works over wifi and mobile data connection regardless of carrier from an Android forum (I need it because I'm on China Mobile and it's not available in my app store at all). If you want the apk, please let me know and I can email it to you.
I don't understand. I downloaded skype on a nexus s using a canadian carrier without issue. It seemed to work fine. Is it somehow different for other android phones?
No, there is Skype for Android (which is available for any carrier), it's just "wifi only" in the U.S., but most people should be able to get their hands on the non-U.S. version if they know how to use google.
The sheer suckiness of US networks never ceases to amaze. For a supposed 'technology' country it's amazing how backward they are, and just how much they have customers by the balls. And the customers don't seem to mind.
Other than the ability to make video calls to a computer/laptop, I'm not sure how this is an improvement from Apple's "FaceTime".
I suppose that if you own an older iPhone/iPod or an iPad and want to receive video calls but not have the ability to broadcast your own video, then this is a much appreciated update.
"Other than the ability to make video calls to a computer/laptop"
The number of device that you can make video calls to increased from ~10M (iPhone4 and iPod Touch 4) to ~1000M (internet-connected PCs, notebooks, and netbooks).
So if the Skype videocalling network has 100x the devices as the FaceTime videocalling network, then its value is something like 10,000 times greater [1].
It's a bit like stating "I'm not sure how $10 million is an improvement over $1000."
