IPhone – Skype on ios7/iPhone4 completely useless

iphoneskype

I have an old iPhone4 with iOS7. It does, until now, what I need it to do so I've not upgraded.

Unfortunately, the last few versions of Skype are killing the phone. I mean the whole OS is completely unresponsive. Even volume controls take seconds to respond!!

I've tried killing all other apps with no difference. At least if Skype behaved itself it would be some consolation but even that being active is completely useless. Even calling the test service makes it behave oddly. It says it is ringing, and the audio ringing is playing but then the call is answered while it still says it is ringing and playing the ringing tone.

Even the audio is breaking up and parts are coming through out of order!

It is a complete and utter mess!!. I am NOT getting a new phone just for Skype but I've got credit through Skype Out and need to be able to use it.

I've send feedback to Microsoft through the app a version or two ago, nothing.

I was running 6.8 but I've gone to the app store and installed the latest version, 6.12 for my OS and no difference.

I've tried restarting the phone and again no difference.

It used to work just fine before they did the UI changes and then undid them.

Is anyone else having this problem? I've even contemplated installing an older version through some hack I found but it is time consuming to get it done…

Best Answer

After spending a considerable amount of time, I managed to install a much older version of Skype using the Windows version of the guide mentioned here,

http://lifehacker.com/download-old-versions-of-ios-apps-with-a-clever-workaro-1749950092

I was lucky that my first attempt gave me a version that worked so I only had to do it once.

For anyone else interested, in the list of softwareVersionExternalIdentifiers I selected 756732646 which corresponded to Skype version 5.7.120

HTH