Gadgetory

well this is Scott Lowe for The Verge checking out the new Skype app for the PlayStation Vita as you can see it's been custom tailored to the PlayStation Vita's unique UI and makes full use of the 5 inch LED display it has a bit of an issue in terms of boot times takes about 10 seconds to fully load up which is about par for the course when it comes to Vita apps but it's certainly slower than the Android and iOS equivalents when you first boot into the app you get presented with your contact lists as a ray of icons you can't really switch to an ListView which can be kind of cumbersome for those with a longer contact list but since mine is greatly small it's not too bad you do have the option to scroll through the letters of your contacts on the on the left on this little side scroller which could be pretty handy and resolving that issue but you know again not quite as efficient as it probably could be you do have full access to call history and you know you can revisit contacts that way and you can you know make calls to smart phones and landlines using the keypad of assuming of course you have a connection in terms of your profile you can access you know your status updates you can you know set up call forwarding and Skype credits but you can't really sign up if you don't already have an account so if you if you want to use this app you have to go to a PC or Mac to to sign up there in terms of call quality it's fairly decent works over 3G and Wi-Fi so you know you do have that versatility there so let me go ahead and give Shawn a try hey Shawn so as you can see Shawn is presented as an icon on the screen and it illuminates as he speaks in terms of options as far as controlling the call you don't really have a whole lot you can mute and unmute you can you know turn on the rear camera or the front camera or turn it off entirely if you're doing a video conference and you know of course just hanging up on them of course with it it doesn't support multiple users which is kind of a disappointing but you know for right now it's fairly accessible this is Sean Sean are you on 3G or Wi-Fi right now yeah so with Wi-Fi you can see there's a bit of a latency issue so it's not you know super ideal and then it you know may not be really evident on the video but there is a considerable amount of compression as well you know a lot of that is of course coming from the front-facing camera which is you know not exactly renowned for its quality but you know is functional which is pretty good it also works over 3G which is pretty handy although it's hardly what I would say stable so you know it definitely could use a little bit of work one unfortunate thing is if you were to hop out of the app like I am about to so sorry Sean you lose the call so if you were to pop back in you'll see that I totally lost Sean which is unfortunate so you know there are definitely issues with the app you know again there's call quality issues depending on your connection but you know overall performance is a bit sluggish due to the nature of the platform you do get full access to notifications in the Vita's you know notification tray which is which is handy so you can see if you missed a call it does work even though you're not in you know in the app itself though closing it entirely will disconnect you so if you were to flick away you are you know completely taken out so again this is free for download now on the PlayStation Store you know if you if you're a Skype user is fairly handy but you know again it's not the ideal platform for the service so for more head over to the verge calm