A post on the Skype Garage blog announced an update for Skype for Windows Phone 8, officially dubbed the “Skype for Windows Phone 8 Preview 2.1” (glad the Skype kids are fitting right in at Microsoft with the naming policies, anyway).  The release, available from the Windows Phone Marketplace, provides a number of improvements, especially to background notifications and calling.

The app has, however, also “temporarily disabled” People Hub integration:

We have also temporarily disabled the People Hub integration as it was causing issues with device stability. We are working with the Windows Phone team to resolve the issue and to enable the integration again in a future release.

In addition, the blog post lists two new features making it easier for Windows Live Messenger users to use Skype on their Windows Phones:

Buddies from Windows Live Messenger are labeled in the People list.

Added option to enable toast notifications for Windows Live Messenger buddies.

While there’s no word on whether it’s the Skype app or the People Hub itself that’s causing “issues with device stability”, it isn’t good news either way, but hopefully this is truly a temporary situation, and that “future release” will be coming sooner rather than later.

Are you using Skype for Windows Phone?  What do you think of the new update?