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I happened to be reading a comparison of Telegram and Whatsapp this morning [1]. I've never used Whatsapp, is it really this bad or is the reviewer clearly a ma

I happened to be reading a comparison of Telegram and Whatsapp this morning [1]. I've never used Whatsapp, is it really this bad or is the reviewer clearly a massive Telegram fanboy/girl? [1] https://info.seibert-media.net/display/Atlassian/Comparison+of+Telegram+Messenger+and+Whatsapp https://info.seibert-media.net/display/Atlassian/Comparison+...

mino 10y ago
Telegram is superior to Whatsapp from every perspective except for its smaller user base. However, how can you take as unbiased a comparison table that uses adjectives as "Incredibly fast loading times", "UNRIVALED", etc.?
- unicornporn 10y ago
  > Telegram is superior to Whatsapp from every perspective except for its smaller user base. I'd say, except for its security/encryption...
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    The encryption they claim to use. Not saying they don't, just saying it's only "sort of" superior on encryption, given this caveat.
    - Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
      The same goes for Telegram. The android client hasn't seen any updates to it's github repo since sep 2016. And, it is quite easy to verify that WhatsApp's encryption is doing what we think. A friend of mine managed to reverse engineer their protocol in 2012 in less than 24 hours, by himself. And there is quite a big chunk of the computer security market that would disagree with the claim that something has to be open source to be verifiably secure.
      - idanoeman 10y ago
        Couldn't WhatsApp faithfully implement the protocol, but also keylog and phone home occasionally? How would you know?
        Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
        Sure, but then again so could Telegram. It's a rather fruitless discussion.
        idanoeman 10y ago
        No it's not. The fruit is: use a sideloaded Signal which you built yourself if you really need to be secure. If you're not, Signal is still better than Telegram or Whatsapp.
        Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
        Well, that I agree on, but that wasn't the discussion I was having :)
AndrewOMartin 10y ago
I've read the list, and although I have faith in its veracity (except for the "value" column) and Telegram appears to have a bunch of extra features, I'm sticking with WhatsApp. They both have the features I need. Note that they're both listed in the table as having "End-to-end encrypted chats" (value: "medium"?!)
- morsch 10y ago
  There are a few factual errors in the list: The Telegram clients seem to be open source, but the server is proprietary. WhatsApp does have a native client for a few platforms; nobody knows about it because everyone just uses WhatsApp Web. WhatsApp has animated GIFs.
Siimteller 10y ago
For an independent and serious comparison check https://www.securemessagingapps.com https://www.securemessagingapps.com that focuses mostly on the security/privacy aspects of various messengers.
Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
Well, there is some truth to it, but as a user of both I prefer whatsapp since: 1. most of the features that whatsapp lack are features I find annoying in Telegram. 2. Whatsapp is encrypted by default, which Telegram is not. I don't think I have ever used a secret chat, despite having oven 50 people with whom I regularly talk to over Telegram. The client being open source is somewhat of a stretch. They have released many new versions, yet the github repo hasn't been updated in 7 months.

mino 10y ago

Telegram is superior to Whatsapp from every perspective except for its smaller user base. However, how can you take as unbiased a comparison table that uses adjectives as "Incredibly fast loading times", "UNRIVALED", etc.?

unicornporn 10y ago
> Telegram is superior to Whatsapp from every perspective except for its smaller user base. I'd say, except for its security/encryption...
- lucb1e 10y ago
  The encryption they claim to use. Not saying they don't, just saying it's only "sort of" superior on encryption, given this caveat.
  - Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
    The same goes for Telegram. The android client hasn't seen any updates to it's github repo since sep 2016. And, it is quite easy to verify that WhatsApp's encryption is doing what we think. A friend of mine managed to reverse engineer their protocol in 2012 in less than 24 hours, by himself. And there is quite a big chunk of the computer security market that would disagree with the claim that something has to be open source to be verifiably secure.
    - idanoeman 10y ago
      Couldn't WhatsApp faithfully implement the protocol, but also keylog and phone home occasionally? How would you know?
      - Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
        Sure, but then again so could Telegram. It's a rather fruitless discussion.
        idanoeman 10y ago
        No it's not. The fruit is: use a sideloaded Signal which you built yourself if you really need to be secure. If you're not, Signal is still better than Telegram or Whatsapp.
        Johnny_Brahms 10y ago
        Well, that I agree on, but that wasn't the discussion I was having :)

AndrewOMartin 10y ago

I've read the list, and although I have faith in its veracity (except for the "value" column) and Telegram appears to have a bunch of extra features, I'm sticking with WhatsApp. They both have the features I need. Note that they're both listed in the table as having "End-to-end encrypted chats" (value: "medium"?!)

morsch 10y ago
There are a few factual errors in the list: The Telegram clients seem to be open source, but the server is proprietary. WhatsApp does have a native client for a few platforms; nobody knows about it because everyone just uses WhatsApp Web. WhatsApp has animated GIFs.

Siimteller 10y ago

For an independent and serious comparison check https://www.securemessagingapps.com https://www.securemessagingapps.com that focuses mostly on the security/privacy aspects of various messengers.

Johnny_Brahms 10y ago

Well, there is some truth to it, but as a user of both I prefer whatsapp since: 1. most of the features that whatsapp lack are features I find annoying in Telegram. 2. Whatsapp is encrypted by default, which Telegram is not. I don't think I have ever used a secret chat, despite having oven 50 people with whom I regularly talk to over Telegram. The client being open source is somewhat of a stretch. They have released many new versions, yet the github repo hasn't been updated in 7 months.