[rkangel]

It's good that we've converged on a standard approach for the core stuff - it's the associated functionality that's important and varies quite a lot.

Contact discovery and adding - Signal has gone with the WhatsApp approach here. There are downsides like needing a phone number but it makes it very easy and means that they can do things like sending you notifications when one of your pre-existing contacts joins Signal.

Backups - this is my main sore point with Signal, in terms of recommending it to my friends. Unless they're conscientious or put in extra work they're going to lose all their message history when they get a new phone. You need to do manual backup and restore to transfer messages, and if your phone is lost/stolen then you're screwed. I've set up sync but it's quite a lot of work for what (e.g.) WhatsApp does for free.

[jlokier]

> sending you notifications when one of your pre-existing contacts joins Signal

This was the main reason I didn't choose Signal a couple of years ago.

I don't want all the people who have me in their contact database or vice versa (I'm not sure which it is) to get that notification. It's none of their business that I've joined Signal or when I do. Especially not the commercial contacts.

I joined Telegram thinking it didn't do that notification, and was surprised and annoyed when just after joining someone in my phone contacts then started a surprise chat with me. Yet I've never received a notification about anyone joining Telegram, so I must be confused about this feature.

I completely agree about Signal conversation backup being the biggest issue. For my uses, a chat app that doesn't save non-secret conversations in a way I can keep and search long term is of little interest. The ability to transfer history between Android devices is no use if the reason for having a new device is the old one is lost or broken.

(I use a mix of Telegram "secret" chats (which aren't sync'd) and regular chats (which are) depending on the subject, generally preferring the latter if it's not sensitive. I often want to refer back to things or search them, especially things like photos, dates of events, agreements, etc.)

[shiftingleft]

WhatsApp also loses all e2e guarantees in the process. WhatsApp backups are not encrypted.

Signal on Android does support encrypted backups, however they're not automatically synced with anything. I think on iOS there's a different way to migrate your data, but it seems to require a PC.

[rkangel]

It depends what you mean by "end" in "e2e". It is encrypted all the way to my device. I do see the issue though.

Signal has all the capabilities to do this and have encryption. Why does the chat backup feature (with 30 character passphrase) not offer to store the data in GDrive so that Android can restore it? It's an encrypted bundle so that should be fine.

[newscracker]

Signal on iOS allows direct transfer from one phone to another when they’re physically close by. There is no backup and restore if your phone is lost or broken. Messages also get deleted on the “source” phone once the direct transfer is completed to the “destination” phone.