Skype (for iPhone)
Calls to standard phones costs 2.3 cents a minute or $2.99 a month unlimited.
Excellent voice and video call quality. Simple, clear interface with elegant transitions. Fast performance. Control over notifications. Group chat. Consistency with other platforms' Skype apps.
No group video chat. Some capabilities missing from previous versions.
Bottom Line
More than just tops in video calling, Skype offers the most complete communication package around. The latest version of its iPhone app is better looking, faster, and more consistent with other platform versions.
The iPhone Skype app (free) was long overdue for an update. Though it's had interim releases, it hasn't been truly redesigned since the days of iOS 4. The new version adds not only a fresh look, but also faster performance, easier group chatting, and better notification control. There's really no single communication service that offers everything Skype does. Plenty of other services such as , , and even Facebook Messenger&have some of Skype's capabilities, but none offers as complete a package.
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Though it's mostly associated with free peer-to-peer video calling, Skype also offers voice calls to regular phone numbers (including mobiles and landlines) as well as to other Skype users, group calling, group video, video and voice messaging, text chatting with file exchange, SMS out, screen sharing&the list goes on.
Skype is also available for any platform you can think of: Android, Blackberry, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Windows Phone, Xbox, and many smart TVs. Maybe that explains why the service recently passed two&billion talk minutes a day among its 300-million-plus users. You can even get an incoming phone number through Skype that works with standard mobiles and landlines. The newly redesigned Skype app for iPhone supports most (though not all) of the service's capabilities in a highly usable, intuitive design.
Getting Started with Skype for iPhone
To create a Skype account, you can either fill out a form requiring name, email, country, and language, or you can just use your Facebook or Microsoft Account credentials (such as
account). You don't need to enter credit card info to sign up, but if you do, you can avail yourself of things like cheap calls to regular phones (either using pay-as-you-go Skype Credit or a subscription), SMS messaging, and low-cost access to public Wi-Fi hotspots. Unlimited calling plans start at $2.99 a month and pay-as-you go is 2.3 cents a minute for the U.S, but SMS messages are actually a bit pricey at 11.2 cents each.
Interface As with the previous Skype iPhone app, there's no true home page. Instead, you swipe through three main views to start communicating&People, Recent, and Favorites&or check out your own profile page from its icon at top right. I usually leave the app on the Recent view, since that's where I can keep up with ongoing interactions. Navigation between each section is more elegant than in the previous version, which snapped from view to view with no visual transition. Now they slide back and forth smoothly and naturally.
If you need to find someone from your list of contacts, People is the place, and Favorites offers large tiles for easy access to the most important people in your world. Sitting steadily at the bottom of all these screens are two buttons&one for the dial pad and one for chat.
The design of the Profile page is more pleasing and cleaner than in the older version, but it doesn't include a couple of helpful entries that were formerly present. For example, there are no longer entries for your Skype Number (the number that people can use to call you from standard phones). Nor do you see the status of voice messages, call forwarding, or Skype Wi-Fi. The last is a separate app that lets you use your Skype Credit to pay by the minute for access via , such as those Boingo hotspots you find at airports.
Call and Video Quality I can sum up call quality in Skype pretty quickly: It's been in the lead for years, and just seems to keep getting better. I made test calls in the app from New York to the West Coast and to Japan. I found in my testing (and regularly find in my frequent personal usage) that Skype's voice quality is actually superior to what I've often gotten on a mobile call. And video, though highly bandwidth dependent, looks reasonably clear, even over mobile connections. It's not quite as sharp as Apple's FaceTime, but the difference is slight, and FaceTime requires that both parties have Apple equipment. After a Skype call, the app asks you to rate its quality, so any problems are reported to the company.
Group Chat It's hard to believe the iPhone Skype app didn't have group messaging before this update. Starting a chat session with either one or multiple users is now possible from any page of the main interface (Recent, Favorites, or People). You can include photos inline in chats, but I still find the emoticon selection lacking compared with
and the stickers in . If chat group members go offline, they see any new messages the next time they're online. You can also now leave a multiparty chat whether you or another user started it, and you can see a list members of a large chat on a separate page.
Speed A big claim for the rebuilt Skype iPhone app version is that it's up to five times faster than the previous one for some actions. When I tried opening each version of the app on my iPhone 5, I noted that the new version took 2 seconds to open, whereas the old one took 4 seconds. When signing back in after signing out, however, I didn't see a real difference. In other words, I personally haven't experienced any fivefold speed multiplications, but the app is definitely faster in some regards.
Notifications Notifications in the latest Skype for iPhone get some welcome updates. First, the service's underlying notification system now spares you from seeing the same unread messages or missed calls as new events on multiple devices once you've addressed them on one device. And app interface updates now let you choose whether to receive any combination of push, in-app, and audio notifications for chat.
What's Missing&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
As I mentioned earlier, the Skype iPhone app doesn't support every Skype feature, and there are features you'll find in competing apps that you don't get in Skype. One example is Viber's ability to move a call from your mobile app to your desktop or tablet, something that would be most welcome in Skype. As for standard Skype features, the app doesn't support group video or initiating group voice chat.
Skyping With the New iPhone App The new iPhone Skype app is limited compared with the vast possibilities offered by the Skype service as a whole, but this very limitation gives it a welcome simplicity. The app does the things you're most likely to want to do on your iPhone and does them well, in a pleasing design, and with speed and fluidity. Could it be more powerful or feature-packed? Sure, and the designers tell me more features are on the way. If your people all have iPhones, you may just want to stick with the built-in FaceTime app, but for full-featured VoIP, video calling, and messaging that works across all platforms, Skype for iPhone is an easy Editors' Choice.
Other Skype iPhone Apps
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NI Circuit Design Suite 12.0 Professional Edition (Multisim and Ultiboard)
37 Ratings | 3.70 out of 5
NI Circuit Design Suite 12.0, which includes the familiar NI Multisim and NI Ultiboard products, is both a software upgrade for current SSP members that are using version 11.0.x and a full installation for new users of the software.
Learn more about our .
This new release brings with it a long list of new features and quality improvements. The following list is a summary of the what's included:
LabVIEW-Multisim co-simulation
Multisim snippets
Upgrades to Microchip software
Database improvements
Improvements to interface and property editing for generic diodes, transistors and FETs
Digital signal analysis
Improved text handling in Multisim
Ability to load last file on Multisim startup
Buses and connectors added to sheet properties color scheme
Ability to configure pin and gate swapping added to Multisim
Display of net/component attributes in status bar
Thumbnails
Improvements to DXF import
Improvements to Parts Position tab
Improved shortcut for toggling layers
Layers tab is default on Ultiboard startup
Force vectors off on Ultiboard startup
Improvements to polygon functionality in Ultiboard
Connectivity check and warn on single pins
Amalgamation of component help into Multisim Help
105 bug fixes (see Readme for more details)
For information on how to install it, or how to obtain it, keep reading the following sections.
In order to be eligible for this release through Update Service, you must have a valid SSP contract and a 11.0.x version. This is a new major release and it will install side-by-side with your current 11.0.x version, it will not uninstall or update your 11.0.x installation. Owners of purchased software after the time of release will receive 12.0 in their shipment. You can also download the software from the evaluation URL and activate using your version 12.0 serial number.
You do not need to uninstall your current software, this update will install side-by-side to all 11.0.x versions.
Professional Editions include: Power Professional, Full and Base Editions.
If you currently have an active SSP account, you can have the NI Update Service automatically upgrade your software. To access the NI Update Service, in Windows go to: Start>>Programs>>National Instruments>>NI Update Service and click Check for Updates. Follow the instructions in the screen.
After the update has been applied, you will still see your current 11.0.x installation, and also the new 12.0 installation. You can launch 12.0 and verify its version, the Help>>About Multisim (or Ultiboard) dialog should read Version 12.0 (12.0.653), this means that your software is current up to version 12.0.0.1.
If you want to install this software for evaluation purposes, follow the link to the evaluation download located at the beginning of this document.
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