FINAL UPDATE: Skype issue with Android Contacts

In case you didn't know, the frustration with Skype has come to an end. On February 28th, Microsoft announced that they would be retiring Skype after 22 years. On May 5th, the app would no longer work. Note that Skype for Business is not affected as it is different. I'm not surprised that Microsoft decided to do this. Teams was looking newer and much better than Skype. I wondered: will Microsoft discontinue or replace Skype? Starting with Skype and Teams Insiders, Microsoft started sending a message to Skype users to either transfer most if not all of their chats to Teams, or export their data to a file until May 5th. This message reached broad availability to all Skype users on April 1st (no joke!) and the process of transferring data over was easy. All you had to do was sign into Teams Free with a Skype account login, and a button would come up to transfer your chats and contacts. You can then use your new Teams Free account and pick up where you left off. Teams users during the transition period could chat with Skype users and vice versa. It appears that you still might be able to transfer data to Teams after May 5th until January 2026, when all Skype data will be deleted. I received an email from Microsoft about Skype's retirement. On May 2nd, Skype started showing a notification about moving to Teams (under the bell icon in the app) as well as sending messages about FAQs transitioning to Teams. YouTube tutorial videos from the official Skype channel were linked. Note that Skype chats with Teams for work or school users will not transfer over to Teams, along with chats with yourself, private conversations, chats with bots (like Copilot), or chats with Skype for Business users. Version 8.138.0.213 (released March 26th) is the last version that allows you to use Skype normally (although it stopped working as of May 19th). Version 8.150.0.125 (released May 5th), the last version of Skype, removes the Skype account from your phone and stops syncing phone contacts to Skype servers. It displays a message to start using Teams. The web version of Skype redirects to Teams Free as of May 5th. On the Samsung Galaxy Store, version 8.138.0.213 became available on April 1st, while version 8.150.0.125 became available May 9th. The app was pulled on May 13th. The Google Play Store removed Skype on May 19th. The end of an era! As for my issue with Skype contact sync, I made some new discoveries. First of all, Skype Support admitted that my issue may be a bug with older Android versions, and that they wouldn't fix it as Skype was being retired. Apparently there have been no reports of similar issues using Teams. I was finally able to replicate a similar issue to the one with my Mom's phone on my phone. I reported it using the Report a Problem feature of Skype. To replicate it, all I had to do was to add two WhatsApp numbers to my phone's contact list. I then proceeded to turn on Skype contact sync by allowing permission to access my phone's contacts, as well as turning Sync My Contacts on in the Skype app. These two numbers I added now no longer had an Edit button on them. When Skype does its second contact sync, that's where the trouble starts. These two contacts now lost their call and text buttons! Now all they have is their name and a Skype to Phone button. Unlike my Mom's phone, there is no option to Manage Linked Contacts to unlink these contacts from Skype. If I disable Sync My Contacts, the contacts don't go back to normal. If I turn Sync My Contacts on again, these two contacts disappear from the Contacts app list. I have to go back to WhatsApp to recreate the contacts again. How annoying! So clearly the problem was never fixed like I suspected. There seems to be a problem with Skype syncing contacts with its server. Some people on a German forum reported Skype actually put some of their contacts in the Google Contacts Trash bin! Something is going wrong here! I sent feedback to Google in the Google Contacts app about this issue, as well as emailing their developer email. I got a message back saying this email was no longer being monitored! I sincerely hope Teams Free can do better.