We were one of the firsts to announce the availability of the Skype Mobile Beta almost 2 years ago, and it has continued to be one of our most popular posts, even to this day. Today, however, the Skype team finally announced the availability of a native Symbian application, specially designed for touchscreen smartphones like the Nokia N97 and the X6. A version for non-Nokia Symbian phones is also coming soon, apparently.
This new application is definitely going to tax your phone quite a bit. The install size is 6MB, though fortunately I was able to install it on my memory card with no problems. It’s also quite resource-hungry, which is a shame on phones like, well, pretty much all of Nokia’s touchscreen smartphones. You won’t be able to run Skype all the time as the RAM situation will likely cause it to close down periodically.
However, if you’re a Skype user, this is definitely the release for you! As you’ll see in the video below, you can easily chat with your contacts, including the ability to send them a file over Skype. The client works over both 3G and WiFi, including phone calls, so you don’t need to worry about it using your cell minutes any longer - simply find yourself a data connection, be it 3G or WiFi, and you’re good to go.
You can also add to your Skype-Out credit or make other account changes straight from the client, and there is a handy tabbed interface for switching between functions. A cool feature, too, is the ability to show your phone’s contacts in your Skype list, so that you could theoretically make all your phone calls over Skype. Here’s a video showing off the various features:
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Nokia promised a native Skype integration on its N97 over a year ago, and we finally have it. Is this something you’ll use on your phone?
You can download the new client by pointing your phone’s browser to http://www.skype.com/m
