Skype has finally added video to its Android app. You can now make free voice or video calls to other Skype users from your Android smartphone. It doesn’t matter if the person you’re calling is using Android, iOS, a PC, or even a TV. Video calls work over WiFi or 3G connections.
That’s the good news. The less good news is that Skype only supports video calls on a handful of phones. You need Android 2.3 and a front-facing camera. Right now the only phones that are officially supported are the Google Nexus S, HTC Desire S, and Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo and Xperia Pro.
There’s no Skype app at all for tablets running Android 3.x Honeycomb.
Skype 2.0 for Android also features a redesigned user interface with a new start screen that lets you call phones, view your contact list, or see your profile or history. There’s also a “share” button for updating your Skype status.
You can download Skype 2.0 for free from the Android Market.
Competitor Fring recently rolled out support for 4-way video calling on Android and iOS — but not only do you need four friends to take advantage of that one-upsmanship, but you need four friends that actually use Fring. If the company keeps beating Skype to the punch, it might not be that hard to find people willing to give Fring a try, but for now Skype has a much larger user base which makes today’s announcement pretty big — even if it only affects Android users with a few handsets.
