It’s been a few weeks since Skype announced its plans to release group video calling for iOS and Android devices, and today the team is sharing in a blog post that the feature is now rolling out on all iOS and Android devices in North America and Europe. Just when you thought you could escape your family, now you’ll have your face jammed in the corner of a screen beside your second cousin Mary and your uncle’s neighbour’s dog, Jim.
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If 25 people sounds like a hefty processing load for Microsoft to carry, it’s because it is. Audio for the calls utilizes Microsoft’s SILK Super Wide Band audio codec from its cloud conferencing stack, and was worked on in partnership with Intel who helped to optimize the code for Azure running on Intel processors.
Last month, Microsoft announced that mobile users would be able to make group video calls.
Skype has been in the news quite a lot recently. 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. What’s more is Microsoft has also increased the number of people who can be part of a single video call from 5 up to 25. This lets anyone invite people to a group conversation, and they can even participate in a video call using Skype for Web.
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“We’ve built an experience optimized for mobile and tablet screens”. However, some of Skype’s great new features, like group chat, never really made it to Skype on mobile gadgets. The company hopes to have this feature live for all users across the globe by March.
