I could write more critique regarding the forced contact discovery, the use of phone numbers as identifiers, but at lest the underlying security of the app is good.
That meant you would only use Signal, and the recipient would receive the message via Signal if he too was a user. Basically it worked like iMessage on iOS, but was 100% OSS.
Which from what I can tell, is a thing people here on HN (not to mention /r/Android) are asking for all the time.
Using Signal on iOS though indeed feels weirder because you always need to “discover” who has what IM-service, and then start the corresponding app.
That’s a flaw of iOS though, and not Signal, and all non-iMessage services suffers for that.
I agree the permissions (especially the forced contact discovery) is problematic.
And then I gave up because of the forced contact discovery... it's a pity.
I wish there was a popular chat service that worked more like Blackberry. Central network but just pseudonymns instead of the phone number.
..for what?
Occasionally, when an SMS arrives, the Messages app will crash, suggesting to me that Messages is still playing a roll in handling text messages on my Android phone.
Where is the line between Messages app and Signal?
But, I love the idea and signal is the only app I use for messaging, so obviously these things don't bother me that much :)
If I didn't trust their security measure the most, I wouldn't use it.
Check out my other comment about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19894385