Skype

[Guest jamesrl]

Just a quick question.

Does Skype work on the ZTE Crescent. I had an error with it not loading,

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Any one else have this or is skype ok?

I am on a rooted stock rom

Thanks

[Guest Dazzozo]

I think people have it working for calls, but not video chat.

[Guest jamesrl]

Thanks that gives me hope. The people at skype say it wont work on our phones, ie they cant be bothered

[Guest BLu3HaZe]

I get that error if I'm out of memory (only 1MB free in internal), clearing data in Skype fixes it. Or sometimes its because the phone is VERY slow in WiFi, there's an added latency of around +800ms on every new connection. But once Skype is connected, it works well for audio calls.

PS - Do not answer an incoming video calls (not supported), makes the whole phone get stuck.

@Daz - I've been very interested in the innards of Android and trying to learn from compiling onwards to try and understand this issue of Skype. Processor usage is very high even on a normal voice call and I feel its cuz of Java and the crappy VM approach. Is it possible that a native app will be faster, can someone run a native app easily, and will it be possible to convert Skype into a native app and add video support for our ARMv6?

Edited July 28, 2012 by BLu3HaZe

[Guest rymate1234]

Skype works well for me, as long as I avoid video

[Guest BLu3HaZe]

Maybe there is hope after all :) 720p on a 700MHz? I can live with QVGA even.

http://devforum.skype.com/t5/Compiling-Runtimes/SkypeKit-performance-on-ARM-v6/td-p/1667

[Guest Liamness]

I feel its cuz of Java and the crappy VM approach

Hmm. A VM is more able to take advantage of the features of the hardware, even if the developer did not consider it. Developers of pre-compiled apps have to decide which features they are going to use before delivery, which usually means targeting the lowest common denominator. This is not much of a problem on iOS, because all the hardware is largely the same and any differences can be accounted for, but Android is a broad platform. Not going with a VM would've caused many headaches.

[Guest BLu3HaZe]

Hmm. A VM is more able to take advantage of the features of the hardware, even if the developer did not consider it. Developers of pre-compiled apps have to decide which features they are going to use before delivery, which usually means targeting the lowest common denominator. This is not much of a problem on iOS, because all the hardware is largely the same and any differences can be accounted for, but Android is a broad platform. Not going with a VM would've caused many headaches.

Well VM or not, have a look at the last post? If such performance can be achieved, it should be enough for good video calls. Only thing is that as not all (maybe few have it) armv6s have a VFP, the skypekit uses software floating point processing according to their forum.

Win32/Linux doesn't use a VM for apps and yet runs on a vast variety of hardware, yes? If drivers can be optimized, native code should "theoretically" be faster. Can never know until we do a proper benchmark.