One of the most useful of the new features is support for Message Drafts.
Similar to email, any message you type up in Skype but don't yet send is saved within the conversation with a "draft" tag attached. That way you can return to the message to finish it and send it later.
As I have understood, all our keypresses along with backspacings get recorded on Skype servers anyway, so indeed why not present drafts to users.
However, I may want my notes and drafts organised the way I want, not the way Skype wants. I very much prefer a method that the article acknowledges,
Some people even type up their texts in Notepad, waiting for the right time to send them.
This allows me to save and keep track of my drafts my own way and also presents me with the typing interface that is preferable to whatever Skype has inbuilt.
On the old Opera forums I kept requesting for an option to get some text editor embedded or plugged in to web form fields and the email component. As far as I know, no messaging or multimedia app does it. And now when phablets (devices that tend to not use a hardware keyboard) rule the planet, my request is obsolete. So the Notepad way remains the only sensible solution.
In another email-inspired addition, Skype is also introducing the ability to bookmark important messages. To access this option, you just have to long-press a message (on mobile) or right-click (on desktop), then tap or click "Add Bookmark." This will add the message to your Bookmarks screen for easy retrieval.
Yes, this would be awesomely useful, if I ever send or receive
Skype messages with high value content. But I don't, ever.
A more interesting idea would be to create a calendar or a todo-note from a message, but here again the more appropriate solution is to copy and paste the message in the more appropriate calendar app, which is again the Notepad way, the only sensible solution.
And if you're sharing a bunch of photos or videos all at once, Skype will now organize them neatly. Instead of overwhelming recipients with a large set of photos, the photos are grouped in a way that's more common to what you'd see on social media. That is, only a few are displayed while the rest hide behind a "+" button you have to click in order to see more.
This is about as meaningful as hiding the ending of a long text message behind a plus. It is unfortunate that messaging apps like Skype and Facebook Messenger get used for file sharing, particularly when Facebook Messenger manifestly destroys photo and video quality in the process of transfer, but the files have to be shared somehow and when those apps offer video calls too, it makes sense for them to be able to share photo and video, but exactly share, not to hide them behind a plus as if you were good at organising. You are not.
If Skype wants to really improve, it would be in the area of video calls and screen-sharing rather than the messaging. I'm putting my hopes on improvements of video calls and screen-sharing because the thing that I really hope for - ability to make searches in the message history - is evidently never going to improve.
As one of the older messaging apps still in use, Skype is no longer the largest or most popular, claiming only 300 million monthly active users compared to WhatsApp's 1.5 billion, for example.
However, it's good to see its team getting back to solving real consumer pain points rather than trying to clone Snapchat as it mistakenly tried to do not too long ago. (Thankfully, those changes were rolled back.) What Skype's remaining users appreciate is the app's ease-of-use and its productivity focus, and these changes are focused on that direction.
I may wish to count as one of those who appreciates the "productivity focus" (really: just ease of typing-and-sending and of making a video call) but really I am just left behind. I have no clue what Snapchat is or does - anything different from Instagram? - and my attempts at connecting to Whatsapp have been unsuccessful. And from what I know, it is the exact clone of Skype except that you have to give away your phone number instead of it being optional.