Skype Launches 25-Person Group Video Calling on iOS and Android

[MacRumors]

Earlier in January, Microsoft announced that it would bring a group chat feature to the Skype app on mobile devices over "the next few weeks," but never locked down a specific launch window. Today, the popular video chatting app will begin to support group video calling, similar to its web counterpart, on iOS and Android (via Engadget).

The new feature will allow as many as 25 participants in a single Skype video chat, with 1080p video quality, and access to both front and back cameras. Much like the PC and Mac apps, the person talking will dynamically be rearranged to the center of the experience while everyone listening will be delegated to smaller tiles. The app will also let users pin someone in particular to the center tile to keep their face in a locked location even if they aren't speaking.

For the ultimate get together experience, group video calls are in glorious HD quality and optimized specifically for the device you're using, giving a more natural feel to the call. The person talking is displayed front and center and video is immersive and full screen. Audio is also crystal clear, thanks to our SILK Super Wide Band audio codec in our cloud conferencing stack. To achieve this, we're proud to have worked with one of Microsoft's biggest partners, Intel, which helped enable us to optimize SILK Audio specifically for Azure running on Intel processors.

With the update, Microsoft will make it easier to invite non-Skype users into calls as well, allowing a video chat group's participants to invite anyone to the conversation by sending a link through a messaging app like iMessage, and bypassing the traditional need for their Microsoft account information.

Beginning first in the United States and Europe, the rollout for the mobile group chat feature is expected to be completed within a week. The company hopes that worldwide support will be finished sometime by the end of March.

Skype for iPhone [Direct Link] and Skype for iPad [Direct Link] are both available to download from the App Store for free.

Article Link: Skype Launches 25-Person Group Video Calling on iOS and Android

 

[JaySoul]

Don't even have 25 friends but this will be useful for someone, I'm sure.

 

[iOSFangirl6001]

Holy crap I'm actually part of some Skype groups that will be estatic over this! Thank god Skype it's about ****** time

 

[Dilster3k]

And FaceTime still can't even hit over 2 people. :')

 

[boston04and07]

Would be nice if FaceTime could do something like this. I don't need 25 people at a time, personally, but 2-3 would be great.

 

[pat500000]

happy go lucky for those who have 25 people that uses skype.

I think FaceTime would crash if we tried 25 people to join one chat .

 

[mlovergaard]

This is great news, as someone who's family is spread across the globe, this will be awesome!

 

[Oblivious.Robot]

I hope FaceTime soon follows suit.

As someone who also has their family scattered across the planet, from east to the west, it'll be surprisingly useful and highly convenient.

 

[Sedulous]

Yeah seriously FaceTime, get with the program.

 

[BMcCoy]

Fantastic.. group chat seems such an obvious next step for video-calling on phones.

Why doesn't FaceTime have group chat facility? Seems so obvious a feature...

 

[StevenPG]

I really thought FaceTime would have had this function by now. Well time to go sign up for Skype. Don't think I'll ever use 25 at a time but 3-4 at a time is awesome.

 

[BMcCoy]

Is there some technological requirement to group chat that is significantly more challenging to implement than one-to-one video chat? Assuming adequate processing power, and connection bandwidth/speed.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Don't even have 25 friends but this will be useful for someone, I'm sure.

I used to work at a 30 person company where we would sometimes have the entire company in a single meeting. We hit the 16 person limit that Google Hangouts has about once a month. It'd be annoying; we'd work around it by having multiple people at a single computer, or have some people call other people and put them on speaker.

I think a 25 person limit would have worked out much better for us.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Great feature if it really works, but... 25 people yapping at the same time? It sounds insane!

 

[iOSFangirl6001]

Great feature if it really works, but... 25 people yapping at the same time? It sounds insane!

Eh you'd be surprised. Most Group chats I've been part of ( where they had to host via PC and worry about caps on group numbers ) weren't that bad. We mainly stopped tho in part cause of the outdated limitations

 

[nt5672]

Apple behind again. Our family really used this when it was available from Apple (not 25 but 3 way), then Apple just killed it.

 

[HailstormX]

Yea I wish FaceTime would do this. 3 or 4 would be great. lol or 25 with the iPad pro. Hopefully this summer apple shows off upgrades to FaceTime and hopefully iMessages.

 

[rdlink]

And FaceTime still can't even hit over 2 people. :')

Correct. Overall I have been happy with the progression of Apple products over the last 7 years since I bought my first Mac. But one of the things I am the least happy about is the loss of some of the functionality when Apple shifted from iChat to the FaceTime protocol.

With iChat I could text chat, have audio chats, have multi-person videos and easily control someone else's computer.

 

[the-msa]

been using hangouts for these type of group-videocalls. i dont even have 25 people in my contact list i would want to videocall with. hangouts is limited to 10 i think, but we've yet to hit that.

 

[MuzakaEklekta]

I still don't understand why Apple killed off iChat. It had multi video chat and a decent name too.

 

[Noble Actual]

The whole FaceTime is between 2 people argument is dumb as ****.

At least there should be an OPTION.

 

[coolfactor]

Truly is sad that Apple dropped the ball on FaceTime. Not only was it a downgrade from iChat, but they promised it would be open-sourced, and that still has not happened. They are either scared of competition, or ran into unexpected licensing issues. Either way, FaceTime is falling way behind Skype, both in features and user experience (no floating window on OS X?).
[doublepost=1455818898][/doublepost]

Correct. Overall I have been happy with the progression of Apple products over the last 7 years since I bought my first Mac. But one of the things I am the least happy about is the loss of some of the functionality when Apple shifted from iChat to the FaceTime protocol.

With iChat I could text chat, have audio chats, have multi-person videos and easily control someone else's computer.

You can do all of those three, only split across separate apps... Messages, FaceTime and Screen Sharing, aside from the group calls. The functionality is built-in.

 

[NMBob]

happy go lucky for those who have 25 people that uses skype.

I think FaceTime would crash if we tried 25 people to join one chat .

I don't think FaceTime could even handle 25 people in view of the same camera.

 

[pat500000]

I don't think FaceTime could even handle 25 people in view of the same camera.

People will have to have 25 people fit in one screen.

 

[danielagos]

With iChat I could text chat, have audio chats, have multi-person videos and easily control someone else's computer.

You can still do audio chat and remote control in Messages (only available on Mac-to-Mac).