I think I've had this as well since the upgrade (ipod 5th gen) - I had assumed I pressed something by mistake. But isn't that frequent for me (e.g. once per 20/30 mins if that).

It sounds like your Skritter database might be screwed up. You should try "Clear Local Data" when on WiFi to erase it, then login and let it download the database again. If that doesn't work, you could try deleting the Skritter app and redownloading it. One time I had to restore my iPhone to get Skritter to work properly, but that takes a long time with the amount of stuff I have.

In my earlier generations of Ipods I had this as frequently as you have. This where due the very small memory there is on those devices. In my latest generation those problems are all gone. If I did kill all other applications it happened less often. It also helped to turn of wifi while studying. There are many processes running in the backgound consuming internal memory as well. Is your Ipod latest or earlier generations?

I think the clear local data has sorted any problem I had. Yours is probably 4th gen (5th gen came out in Oct 2012) so mandarinboy2's suggestion of killing other apps sounds good too. Good luck!

might be that the hardware in this case might be a bit outdated.

If it was working until a month ago, then it must have had enough "power" since August until then. And this occurred before the new app came out right? Why not run a video on it for two hours and see if it bounces out of that - would indicate an ipod as opposed to skritter problem...

I had the same model as you previsouly and my problems started when my personal data grow to a decent size. This in conjunction with much other garbage running it starved the device of internal memory. When I bought the latest version that do have much more internal memory all my problems dissapeared. Note, this where on much earlier versions of skritter and skritter have been much leaner over time. I gave my old device to my doughter and did a reset of the whole device and reinstalled skritter. After that she have been able to use the device without any more problems. Her account where larger than mine at the time. It might be data or OS related. Maybe start by reinstalling skritter to clean out all old temp data etc and do a clean load of your data. That did often help with my even earlier versons of skritter IOS app in beta.