For what it's worth, you also don't need to do that if you've ever had a conversation with them (since deleting your message history), since you can use the con

For what it's worth, you also don't need to do that if you've ever had a conversation with them (since deleting your message history), since you can use the conversation search field in the app's home screen - though some users may not know that scrolling up from the initial view of a scrolling list in iOS sometimes reveals a search field. And this also works with non-contacts and group conversations: you couldn't just change the home screen to be a contact list, you'd have to combine them with those other two types of conversation, which sounds more likely to cause confusion than the current setup.