Skype for Business for Android

Review by eFreeware

The most distinctive thing about Skype for Business for Android is how little it tries to be a consumer chat app. This is Microsoft's mobile client for the workplace communications platform formerly known as Lync 2013, and it carries the same name and purpose as the desktop tool many offices already use. Voice and video over wireless, presence, instant messaging, conferencing and calling all sit inside one interface rather than being split across separate apps.

That focus shapes who it is for. If your organization runs Lync or Skype for Business Server, or you work through Office 365, this is the Android end of a system your IT department has already set up. The app is free, there are no ads and no in-app purchases, and it has been installed more than ten million times. It is not a general-purpose messenger for keeping up with friends.

Messaging and calls that follow the workday

The core of the app is the conversation. You can start a group instant message or a video conversation and invite additional participants as the discussion grows, which is the pattern most teams fall into: a quick question in text that turns into a call once typing gets slow. Presence information sits alongside, so the app carries the same signal about whether a colleague is available that the desktop client does.

Calls run over wireless networks, and the app handles both voice and video. Recent conversations are easy to return to, since you can pick up a thread from where you left off rather than hunting through a contact list to restart it. Contacts can be found by name, email address or phone number, which matters in larger organizations where you may know someone's email but not their display name.

What appeals to me here is the continuity. Someone who spends part of the day at a desk and part of it moving between rooms or sites can stay reachable on the same account, in the same threads, without asking colleagues to switch to a personal messaging app. The developer describes the experience as extending Lync and Skype to mobile, and for messaging and one-to-one calls that is a fair description of what the app is built to do.

Meetings, from the invite to the attendee list

Conferencing is where the app does the most work. You can join a Skype for Business meeting, rejoin one you dropped out of, or initiate a meeting yourself. Upcoming meetings appear in the app and can be joined with a single tap, which removes the usual scramble of copying a link or dial-in number while a room full of people waits.

Once inside, you can share your own video and watch the speaker's video, so remote participants are not reduced to a voice on the line. Meeting controls go further than simply leaving: the host can mute attendees or remove them, and can see which participants are using which modalities. That last point is the kind of detail that matters to someone running a session rather than just attending one, since it shows who is on video, who is on audio and who is only typing.

The combination of scheduling, joining and in-meeting control in one place is the strongest argument for installing this on a phone. A meeting that starts while you are away from your desk does not have to wait until you are back at it.

What you need before it will do anything

The requirements are unusually strict for a free app, and they are worth reading before you install. Full functionality needs a Skype for Business or Lync account.

Updates to the server side may be needed for proper performance, and some functionality may not be available in every country. If you are unsure whether your employer has the license and deployment in place, ask your IT department first rather than installing and hoping.

There is also a platform floor: the app is available for Android 4.0 or greater. Authentication runs through the Active Directory Authentication Library, which is the mechanism that ties sign-in to your organization's directory rather than a personal account. In practice this means the app is provisioned for you, not chosen by you, and the person who can answer whether it will work is the one who manages your company's deployment.

Where this belongs on a phone

The clearest fit is an employee inside an organization that already uses this platform. If your calendar is full of Skype for Business meetings, having the join button on your phone is a genuine convenience, and the messaging side means colleagues can reach you in the same place they always do. People who travel between offices, work from home part of the week or spend days in meetings away from a desk get the most from it.

It also suits anyone who has been invited to a meeting on the platform and needs to attend from a phone, even without a full account of their own. That guest path is deliberately provided, though it comes with the limits described above.

The app is less obviously useful to someone whose workplace runs on different tools, or to an individual looking for a personal messaging and calling app. Nothing here is designed around that use, and the server requirement makes it a non-starter outside a supported deployment. The 3.7 average from 173,941 ratings suggests a mixed reception among the people who have installed it, though ratings of this sort tend to reflect workplace frustrations as much as the app itself. It was released in March 2013 and last updated in October 2026, with the recent changes listed simply as bug fixes and improvements.

A workplace client, judged as one

Skype for Business for Android does a specific job and does it in a fairly complete way. Messaging, presence, voice and video calling, meeting scheduling, one-tap joining and host controls are all present, and the app is free with no ads and no in-app purchases. For an organization already running the platform, that is a sensible thing to have on a work phone, and the meeting features in particular are the reason to install it rather than simply reading messages in a browser.

The conditions attached are the real story. Some capabilities may need a server update or may not be available in your country. Those constraints are not flaws in the app so much as the nature of enterprise software, but they decide whether it is usable for you at all.

If your IT department supports the platform and you attend meetings regularly, I would expect this to earn its place on your phone, and it is worth confirming your account and server status with them before you install. If your workplace uses something else, the app has nothing to offer you, and no amount of free downloading changes that.

What's new

Bug Fixes and Improvements