Disruptive Telephony

Skype today nicely release version 2.1.2 for the iPhone providing a key change for iPhone 4 / iOS 4 users.

As shown in the screenshot on the right, there is a new "Go Offline" option that allows you to control how Skype behaves when you switch to another application. For those of us who have used Skype on an iPhone 4, this was one of the challenges that was at times frustrating. When you simply switched to another app, Skype went into the background which is good in that you could continue to receive calls, notifications, etc.

However, in my experience I found that sometimes I did not want to keep getting those notifications - and more importantly I found that Skype would suck down the battery with all of the communication it was doing.

You now have an option in the Settings (which you need to access through the regular iPhone "Settings" app versus through the Skype app) where you can change how long it will be before Skype goes offline when it is put into the background. Images of both settings screens are shown below.

I've just installed this new version, so I haven't yet seen what impact this may or may not have on battery life, but I'm very pleased to see the option there.... thanks, Skype!

P.S. And yes, Skype also fixed a bunch of bugs and made a number of other changes, too...

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