I’ve just downloaded the Skype Beta for Windows Phone and have been playing with it for a few minutes. I haven’t had a chance yet to use it for video calls (it’s still early here!) but I had a couple of thoughts on the interface that I wanted to get down.
- The contact filtering (all/online) is not intuitive. There is a small text notice underneath the contacts pivot item that you have to tap in order to change it. This should be an application bar icon in my opinion.
- The contact list does not show the current status of a user (online/offline/away) … it should.
- There is an icon in the upper right corner that seems to just take you to the recent pivot item … seems strange to me when you can just swipe for that. I must be missing something as to its funtionality … but that’s kind of the point. It’s not very clear what it does.
- Why can’t I pin individual people to my start screen?!?! That is very simple functionality to include and seems like a big miss to me.
I will say that Skype for Windows Phone looks very nice and is very smooth when navigating the interface. It is a beta, so hopefully we’ll see some of the things I’ve mentioned above cleared up in the final release.
I’ll update this post after I’ve had an opportunity to test the video calling and IMing features.