Skype on Android got off to an inglorious start. Not only were owners of phones like the Samsung Galaxy S unable to sign in, but those who did manage it could no longer sign in a few hours after launch. I will quote some information directly from 👻 This link retired before it was even eligible for a pension., which is where I get my information. The first version of Skype had trouble with exiting the app: “Once you make it past the sign-in screen, Skype cannot be exited. The “back” button is usually blocked and does nothing. You will not easily find a close (or exit) option in the Menu either. The only option is the Home button, or switching to another running app. The way to really quit Skype is to kill it, or to figure out the twisted logic of its programmers: tap the My info tab, open the menu, find “Sign out” there, and only then press Back on the main screen.
Today some of these bugs have been fixed, but the controls are still not entirely intuitive. Another well-known issue used to be the small display problem, where you could not see, for example, the sign-in button. Skype has huge hardware requirements: I have not measured the CPU precisely, as I have not yet figured out how, or whether it is even possible on a non-rooted phone. Nevertheless, the app takes up 16MB of ROM and on top of that cannot be moved to the SD card. And the worst comes last: battery consumption. There is no way to quit Skype. Moreover, when you have only Skype running and check Battery use on your Android phone, Skype can easily take 98%, while 2% goes to “System Android“.
The chat layout is not the best either; it uses bubbles, so if someone wrote a long message, you have a small display and forget what the other person said, or there was a lot of it, you will have to scroll. Furthermore, Skype does not support video calls, for example, and does not work on 3G networks; for fast data connections you can use only Wi-Fi. Some newer sources state that Skype works perfectly normally on 3G networks. When I was going through user opinions on Skype for Android, it was not unusual at all to find people saying “the worst app of all time“. Other things that annoy me are the endless offers to buy credit, which sit in the events tab, so they are always in front of your eyes. At least Skype can rotate the keyboard.