The hard problem of messaging has not been solved yet, what people should build is a service like iMessage but with the public key pool per account publicly auditable and verifiable.
Seems like a low effort solution and would not satisfy my requirements, but it probably works for some people.
Edit: just verified. Phone is in flight mode and chatting away on signal-desktop works just fine.
[0]: https://gist.github.com/TheBlueMatt/d2fcfb78d29faca117f5
1) Your keys are safe (device was encrypted and/or you've wiped it remotely, whatever). In such situation you could be able to transfer keys from S-Desktop to new mobile. AFAIK there is no such functionality yet (remember, its Beta).
2) Your keys are not safe. In such case no recovery is possible. Notify all contacts about the fact that they should "reset secure session", forgetting your Signal identity and establish new Signal identity.
Anyway, this is the only solution on market with secure chats and multi-device sync.
That unnecessary limitation really disgusts me, since I am the type who deletes his whole chat history weekly because I don't want to carry it around with me in case of another targeted stealing attempt. I'd love to integrate my whatsapp xmpp account into pidgin.
I basically don't need other communicators right now for close family and part of my friends.
Occasional video call can be made using other platforms.
I've never used multi-device sync, ever. Not on iMessage, Viber, WhatsApp, ... The only one that I use across devices is Skype, but I don't use it except for video.
I know only 1 guy who uses Signal and he is an AT&T systems administrator and linux addict. He understands the difference. The rest, use either iMessage or Telegram and don't really care about the rest.
It reminds me a bit of the CAP-theorem: Security, Device Sync and Usability. Pick two.
My personal preference is solving DU, because I can do security aware stuff with GPG.
Multi-device sync and privacy-awareness both are maybe reasons for a few individuals to switch but they both have problem with the number one feature of messengers: actually reaching other people.
Why something gets adopted is way more dependent on soft factors than on technical factors, as long as the basic requirements are satisfied.
Huh? I don't think this is correct. WhatsApp is huge in Europe, nearly everyone I meet prefers to use WhatsApp over SMS yet almost everybody has "unlimited SMS" plans.
Sadly at the moment that's only WhatsApp and Telegram to some extent. If only there would be some protocol or standard that would allow me to communicate across different providers.
But unfortunately such a standard must be technologically impossible, otherwise it would be implemented and widespread already.
They just want a pretty GUI, their friends to be on it, and an easy way to send videos/photos/voicemails/whatever.
Granted, I've never wanted to send videos and sending photos works well on Signal right now. But until recently the GUI wasn't very polished.
In fact, Brazil's most popular chatting app that is recently banned there doesn't have multi-device sync. Hangouts does. Everyone could use hangouts, but not nearly as many people do.
The problem is that the key pool is in Apple's hands. You cannot guarantee that they don't go and add a key do the pool and get all your messages anyways.