Microsoft has just rolled out a new version of Skype for Windows Phone that comes with several important improvements, all of which are designed to offer a “smarter chat experience,” as the company said in today’s announcement.

Skype 2.25 for Windows Phone can be found in the store, and if you haven’t changed the default configuration of your device, the new version should already be there on your phone.

At the first run, there’s not much to observe when launching Skype, as the new features aren’t exactly aimed at the user interface of the application, but are rather supposed to improve the experience you get with it after deploying the update.

Bigger emoticons and new options

Starting with this version, emoticons that you send in your conversations are bigger and obviously look a bit more appealing, but on smaller devices, such as the Lumia 520, they might actually take too much space on your screen.

One thing that’s really important for this update is for the other contact to have the latest version of Skype as well, no matter if they use it on their phones or on a tablet. Otherwise, the emoticons they send are still small.

At the same time, the new Skype version also includes options to delete messages and clear conversations, both of which are really helpful when trying to keep things organized when chatting with someone.

“You’ve been telling us you’d like to delete individual chat messages or clear a whole chat conversations, so now in 2.25 you can; but remember the messages will still show on other platforms,” Microsoft explained.

Skype should now be faster too

According to the company itself, Skype should now come with improved chat load times, which means that the app should be faster on your device, no matter the hardware configuration.

Unfortunately, on our Lumia 930 test phone, Skype actually seemed to be even slower than before and it even took up to 10 seconds to load a previous conversation. After that, everything indeed went smoothly, but overall, the app seemed to be slower after installation.

And last but not least, after installing the new Skype version, you should be able to see all avatars for groups, and you are also allowed to add groups to your favorites list.

Obviously, everyone should get this new version on their devices as soon as possible, so go ahead and download Skype for Windows Phone to try out all of the above right now.