[nlitsme]

This seems to be an unfortunate case where a feature has a misleading name.

You already had secure and encrypted backups on your phone, which you could copy and restore, if you remembered to copy them, and write down a very long password.

The new feature is apparently a way for signal to sell cloud services.

I do think cloud based backups are very useful for less technical people. But it does not really matter if your (properly encrypted) signal backup lives on a google drive/apple cloud, or on a cloud service managed by Signal.

[Analemma_]

The encrypted backups do work, but Signal is really, really bad at indicating when and how to make them to use them for restoration. Most non-technical people I know are just resigned to wiping out their Signal history every time they get a new iPhone (and I know two people who abandoned Signal and went back to iMessage because of this), and even I've lost it a couple times.

It leaves sort of a gross taste in my mouth that a paid service is the fix for their unhelpful UX.

[noja]

> You already had secure and encrypted backups on your phone, which you could copy and restore, if you remembered to copy them, and write down a very long password.

Did I? Where? on iOS I don't.

Edit: there is a transfer to a new phone thing, but that only works if the old phone still works. Which makes it not a backup (it's a transfer).

[foofoo12]

> if you remembered to copy them, and write down a very long password

All that BEFORE your phone was stolen/damaged.

[aborsy]

Come on, $2/month is nothing, and doubtful would raise much of “revenue “. That’s a coffee a month.