> This will probably be nuts to follow since HN doesn't have any kind of notification but I appreciate your response. You're welcome! > why is a backend neede

> This will probably be nuts to follow since HN doesn't have any kind of notification but I appreciate your response. You're welcome! > why is a backend needed for MMS? is it not direct like phone > cell tower > phone? The MMS stack is....interesting. It is a mix of SMS and HTTP (SMS acts as a signalling to the client (phone) to tell the client an MMS exists, and HTTP is used to get/send an MMS), and MMS has its own encoding scheme. mmsd-tng is an abstraction layer to do MMS decode/encode and send/recieve it all, so a chat application just has to talk to mmsd-tng to get/send MMS. There is a modem Abstraction layer (the two popular ones are oFono and MOdem Manager), and neither support MMS natively. However, with mmsd-tng, they don't need to. (visual voicemail is the same way, except it uses IMAP...yes email IMAP for downloading voicemails) > Just don't embed ads in it like Android ha haha. My GUI isn't exactly pretty, but it works! Plus if I went crazy and did that, it's pretty easy to fork my work. > I just hate the bloatware it is particularly a problem on cheaper phones and part of the carrier eg. Boost they have these notifications you can't get rid of, that's the stuff that "boils my blood". This is sadly why I steer my family to getting iPhones, despite my personal misgivings of Apple. > Interesting info about the deployment stuff. Yeah someone pointed out if your app is like a basic to do list probably not going to get added. A lot of devs are volunteers as well, so the dynamics of the "app store" is much different. I personally think the biggest issue is making sure apps just don't get abandoned. If you really don't want to use official distro channels, flatpak seems to be the way to go (but you can build your own apt repository too if you really want to). > Anyway good luck to you, maybe I'll see you in this field ha whenever I get back into this. My Pinephone is currently just sitting on my desk uncharged. Thanks! I'm not hard to find on Matrix > I gotta check out Matrix too have not really heard of it, offhand I'm like "is it like Mastodon" or something... but yeah. I liken Matrix to "IRC on steriods" or "Slack without the vendor lockin". It's a group chat with different servers and channels.