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Skype updates for Windows Phone 8, Windows desktop

Microsoft made available for download minor updates for its Skype application for Windows Phone 8 and Windows desktop as well as its SkyDrive storage cloud service.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
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Mary Jo Foley
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Skype on Windows Phone 8
Skype says the update for Windows Phone 8 will improve notifications, calls to phone numbers, and more. James Martin/CNET

Microsoft's Skype unit made available for download on Monday Skype updates for Windows Phone 8 and Windows desktop.

Skype 2.6 for Windows Phone 8, which the team calls a "minor" update, is available for download from the Windows Phone Store. The 2.6 update includes improvements around the reliability of chat and call notifications, of calls to phone numbers, and resolution to "occasional missing message preview in the recent conversations list," according to the Skype site.

The Skype team also provided information about some upcoming fixes and updates for still-unresolved problems with Skype on Windows Phone 8. The team is working to fix an issue where calls keep ringing when answered on a different device or ended by the caller. The team also said it would provide in an unspecified future release the ability to sign in with a Microsoft account that isn't joined to a Skype account.

Other coming improvements for some unspecified future releases: a fix to problems some are having with video stopping when a call is in the background; marking as read on other devices a message that the user reads on Windows Phone; and a bug resulting in all calls received when the Skype app is closed appearing as audio calls.

Skype 6.3 for Windows, which works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, is available here. (This new version is not an update for the Skype for Windows 8 application.) There's not much information as to specific new features in 6.3, but improvements to "the quality and stability of the application" are listed on Skype's site as what's new.

In other Microsoft service updates, the SkyDrive cloud storage team also announced a few new enhancements to SkyDrive on Monday that will be rolling out over the next 48 hours. Among them:

  • Ability to scroll through all photos stored on SkyDrive in one seamless timeline experience
  • Faster photo upload
  • Easier readability of thumbnails, as well as new thumbnails for PowerPoint and Word files

This story originally appeared as "Microsoft updates Skype for Windows Phone 8, Windows desktop" on ZDNet.