7 ms·

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with con

by roel_v 8y ago

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.

cosarara 8y ago
Bad integration with contacts sounds pretty serious.
- roel_v 8y ago
  Well yeah but it's not the mess the gp alludes to.
  - kekebo 8y ago
    plus Signal doesn't store all your contacts on their server as Telegram and WhatsApp do
    - roel_v 8y ago
      Do you mean that as a positive or a negative thing? Also, apart from what I mentioned above, I've also found out that with Signal it's very hard to transfer your chat history to another phone. (involves manually copying over a backup, entering 30 char key). I can't in good conscience recommend an app like that as a replacement to anyone, so I guess my Signal experiment will be short-lived.
anotheryou 8y ago
I mostly use it on desktop and the clients feels like 10 years ago. - Doesn't go in to system tray (unless you fiddle with command line arguments). - can't search messages - overall unpolished (e.g. saving a file has no "show in folder" option afterwards)
- jumbopapa 8y ago
  I'd also like to mention that you can't use the desktop client standalone and Signal requires a phone number to sign up. It would be nice if they got rid of these requirements. I use Signal and Telegram both - it's clear to me that Telegram provides the better user experience. I like Signal from the privacy standpoint though. If you're using Android then I think that Signal is kind of a no-brainer to use because it doubles as your SMS client, so if a contact is a Signal user you get the privacy you want, but if they aren't at least you can still text them.
  - FredFS456 8y ago
    Whatsapp doesn't operate as a standalone client either.
    - jumbopapa 8y ago
      I never said it did, but I don't use Facebook properties to begin with.
    - newscracker 8y ago
      The parent talked about signing up for Signal requiring a phone number. The following point is tangential from that after the signup is completed using a phone number. Signal Desktop is a standalone client that can be launched and used without having one's phone nearby or available or connected to the net. WhatsApp, however, requires the phone to be around and connected for the desktop app to send the chats through. From that perspective, WhatsApp actually offers a worse user experience than Signal.
  - aepc2 8y ago
    Only problem: if a user (A) signs up for signal and then uninstalls, the phone number is still tied to the signal app. This means that a signal user (B) now can't get messages to user A. The messages gets delivered to a dead signal account. User A must manually deactivate her account, which she is not even informed about when deleting. Also: if user A has her number trabsferred too somebody else (which is often the case with e g work phones) her account is now owned by a random person.
Frondo 8y ago
Having used Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp heavily (friends on all three, natch), here's my one absolutely critical beef with Signal: It doesn't always deliver messages, and it more frequently doesn't deliver them in a timely fashion. In my experience, Signal delays delivery of messages about 5% of the time -- which is actually huge and makes it unusable for reliable chats. The story which made me never trust Signal again: I was out of town and trying to coordinate with a backup pet sitter, because my original pet sitter became unavailable. I sent them a message via Signal (their preferred chat), heard nothing for a day, and started frantically calling around to everyone I knew who had a key to my place to please take care of a pet. Several days later, I got a reply from them..."Hey, I just got this. Did you need me to take care of your pet?" Over the course of several months of regular chatting with my then-significant otter, I also noticed once or twice in every two week period we'd have a half-day delay on messages...just...silence from one of us or the other, followed by, "Where were you? I texted you hours ago." from one or the other of us. I know not everyone has these problems with Signal, but I've also seen enough other people on here alone complain about this that I know it's not just my hardware or network setup (this was across both Android and IOS devices). For that alone, I will try to deflect away from Signal for anyone who's got any other chat methods set up. Telegram, on the other hand, has been absolutely reliable, both in regular and secure chats. Never a lost message, never a delayed message. Same for Whatsapp. Signal also has the worst UI of all of them, and it comes down to all the polish that free software almost always lacks. On Signal on Android, you can select different colored themes (I like night mode for everything); on IOS, you're stuck with white. The chat bubbles are very plain on Signal, on Telegram they're a little fancier. You can set a chat background on Telegram; Signal, it's a plain white chat. Telegram? You can add sticker packs and use stickers in chats. No stickers in Signal. Attaching photos is cruder in Signal. Group chats are weirder in Signal. If the visual flair doesn't matter to you, then fine, I get it, you don't need to tell me it's not important -- it's important to me. And one more thing that isn't really 100% Signal's fault but absolutely drove me mad when I used it on Android as a replacement to the default SMS app: there's no real way to know when someone sets up Signal and then uninstalls it, and Signal defaults to sending secure messages every time. So, there were a few people I'd text who, I'd send them a text (which Signal sent over its own network), hear nothing for a few hours, then remember that they were one of the people who had uninstalled Signal, and I'd resend the message via non-encrypted SMS and receive an instant reply. No way to tell Signal, "never send to these people via Signal, only use SMS with these people," which adds a tremendous friction to a chat app that really shouldn't be there. Not 100% Signal's fault (those people arguably should be "deregistering" from Signal) but absolutely within their ability to build a fix for it.
nicpottier 8y ago
No live location sharing as one. This is a killer feature for my friends and I.
kitsunesoba 8y ago
Signal’s desktop client is barely good enough to check a box while Telegram’s desktop clients are as good or better than its mobile clients. Furthermore, its desktop clients are native and reasonably efficient. This is huge to me. I spend a large portion of my day in front of computers, so messaging services that take the desktop seriously are much more likely to catch my attention.
- martin_a 8y ago
  For me synchronization between desktop and mobile client is a big issue. Some messages simply don't appear on one device and vice versa. Don't know why, though.

by roel_v 8y ago

Having just installed Signal yesterday, in what respect is it worse than Whatsapp (from a UI pov)? The only thing I found so far is the bad integration with contacts.

cosarara 8y ago

Bad integration with contacts sounds pretty serious.

roel_v 8y ago
Well yeah but it's not the mess the gp alludes to.
- kekebo 8y ago
  plus Signal doesn't store all your contacts on their server as Telegram and WhatsApp do
  - roel_v 8y ago
    Do you mean that as a positive or a negative thing? Also, apart from what I mentioned above, I've also found out that with Signal it's very hard to transfer your chat history to another phone. (involves manually copying over a backup, entering 30 char key). I can't in good conscience recommend an app like that as a replacement to anyone, so I guess my Signal experiment will be short-lived.

anotheryou 8y ago

I mostly use it on desktop and the clients feels like 10 years ago. - Doesn't go in to system tray (unless you fiddle with command line arguments). - can't search messages - overall unpolished (e.g. saving a file has no "show in folder" option afterwards)

jumbopapa 8y ago
I'd also like to mention that you can't use the desktop client standalone and Signal requires a phone number to sign up. It would be nice if they got rid of these requirements. I use Signal and Telegram both - it's clear to me that Telegram provides the better user experience. I like Signal from the privacy standpoint though. If you're using Android then I think that Signal is kind of a no-brainer to use because it doubles as your SMS client, so if a contact is a Signal user you get the privacy you want, but if they aren't at least you can still text them.
- FredFS456 8y ago
  Whatsapp doesn't operate as a standalone client either.
  - jumbopapa 8y ago
    I never said it did, but I don't use Facebook properties to begin with.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    The parent talked about signing up for Signal requiring a phone number. The following point is tangential from that after the signup is completed using a phone number. Signal Desktop is a standalone client that can be launched and used without having one's phone nearby or available or connected to the net. WhatsApp, however, requires the phone to be around and connected for the desktop app to send the chats through. From that perspective, WhatsApp actually offers a worse user experience than Signal.
- aepc2 8y ago
  Only problem: if a user (A) signs up for signal and then uninstalls, the phone number is still tied to the signal app. This means that a signal user (B) now can't get messages to user A. The messages gets delivered to a dead signal account. User A must manually deactivate her account, which she is not even informed about when deleting. Also: if user A has her number trabsferred too somebody else (which is often the case with e g work phones) her account is now owned by a random person.

Frondo 8y ago

Having used Signal, Telegram, and Whatsapp heavily (friends on all three, natch), here's my one absolutely critical beef with Signal: It doesn't always deliver messages, and it more frequently doesn't deliver them in a timely fashion. In my experience, Signal delays delivery of messages about 5% of the time -- which is actually huge and makes it unusable for reliable chats. The story which made me never trust Signal again: I was out of town and trying to coordinate with a backup pet sitter, because my original pet sitter became unavailable. I sent them a message via Signal (their preferred chat), heard nothing for a day, and started frantically calling around to everyone I knew who had a key to my place to please take care of a pet. Several days later, I got a reply from them..."Hey, I just got this. Did you need me to take care of your pet?" Over the course of several months of regular chatting with my then-significant otter, I also noticed once or twice in every two week period we'd have a half-day delay on messages...just...silence from one of us or the other, followed by, "Where were you? I texted you hours ago." from one or the other of us. I know not everyone has these problems with Signal, but I've also seen enough other people on here alone complain about this that I know it's not just my hardware or network setup (this was across both Android and IOS devices). For that alone, I will try to deflect away from Signal for anyone who's got any other chat methods set up. Telegram, on the other hand, has been absolutely reliable, both in regular and secure chats. Never a lost message, never a delayed message. Same for Whatsapp. Signal also has the worst UI of all of them, and it comes down to all the polish that free software almost always lacks. On Signal on Android, you can select different colored themes (I like night mode for everything); on IOS, you're stuck with white. The chat bubbles are very plain on Signal, on Telegram they're a little fancier. You can set a chat background on Telegram; Signal, it's a plain white chat. Telegram? You can add sticker packs and use stickers in chats. No stickers in Signal. Attaching photos is cruder in Signal. Group chats are weirder in Signal. If the visual flair doesn't matter to you, then fine, I get it, you don't need to tell me it's not important -- it's important to me. And one more thing that isn't really 100% Signal's fault but absolutely drove me mad when I used it on Android as a replacement to the default SMS app: there's no real way to know when someone sets up Signal and then uninstalls it, and Signal defaults to sending secure messages every time. So, there were a few people I'd text who, I'd send them a text (which Signal sent over its own network), hear nothing for a few hours, then remember that they were one of the people who had uninstalled Signal, and I'd resend the message via non-encrypted SMS and receive an instant reply. No way to tell Signal, "never send to these people via Signal, only use SMS with these people," which adds a tremendous friction to a chat app that really shouldn't be there. Not 100% Signal's fault (those people arguably should be "deregistering" from Signal) but absolutely within their ability to build a fix for it.

nicpottier 8y ago

No live location sharing as one. This is a killer feature for my friends and I.

kitsunesoba 8y ago

Signal’s desktop client is barely good enough to check a box while Telegram’s desktop clients are as good or better than its mobile clients. Furthermore, its desktop clients are native and reasonably efficient. This is huge to me. I spend a large portion of my day in front of computers, so messaging services that take the desktop seriously are much more likely to catch my attention.

martin_a 8y ago
For me synchronization between desktop and mobile client is a big issue. Some messages simply don't appear on one device and vice versa. Don't know why, though.