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Comment by pmlnr | Hacker News Reader

I have mixed feelings about this, and especially about the google application: it's nearly 300MB.

In comparison, Conversations, which is a full-fledged XMPP client with voice and video included, is ~70MB.

Beyond this, any use of the google app comes with lengthy Terms & Conditions, which is not something I really want in my SMS application.

I moved to Simple SMS Messenger[^1], which doesn't support anything beyond basic SMS & MMS, but it's small, fast, and open source.

[^1]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.simplemobi...

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I deprecated SMS 10 years ago and don't use it anymore. There are better, newer things, like e-mail.

It's the only async channel that works with all people as long as you have their phone number. Anything else requires that you use a specific app or network. Email is too formal for most people and, I've discovered, some people don't have it set up on their phones, so it can become too async/slow.

Well (a) SMS doesn't work with me (b) A lot of SMS messages to my Twilio numbers get dropped so it's a shitty protocol (c) SMS based on a SIM card number can't be used if the SIM card is changed (d) SMS is limited in how many bytes it can send while with e-mail you can easily send megabytes.

If it's too formal that's their problem.

Also, I would never give one of my 10+ phone numbers to someone who I wouldn't give an e-mail address to, except maybe my one junk/spam number.

email is from the end of the 60s. SMS is the GSM service layer, so no, email is not newer. I agree email is better in most terms, but sms slips through without data, and nothing else does because of what it is.

Oh sure, but "e-mail on a phone" is newer, and since it solved literally every problem SMS had, I deprecated SMS.

It's awesome, because you can send larger amounts of data, works across countries and across SIM cards, can also be read on laptops and tablets if you don't have a phone with you, etc.

> and since it solved literally every problem SMS had, I deprecated SMS.

No, it did not. Email needs data connectivity, sms does not.

>I deprecated SMS

Lucky You.

I cannot do bank transactions,

Book travel tickets,

Order anything online,

. . .

Book vaccine appointment to save my life, If I depreciate SMS.

Yeah, that's a disturbing trend.

I once had to give a restaurant a bad review for requiring a phone number in their in-person, dine-in order workflow. I just told them that I don't ask for their wait staff's phone numbers and require it to be a customer. They shouldn't require mine, either. I have cash and credit cards and having money in hand should be enough to be a customer. Period.

I was able to use fake phone numbers for vaccine appointments and most other things.

> I moved to Simple SMS Messenger

Why not Signal? It can be default SMS app (not encrypted) but has the added advantage of switching to E2E if both parties are on Signal.

Becaue signal doesn't store received sms in the system sms store, and thst means I can't back them up. I tried, and if you change sms apps, signal sawllows whatever sms you received when it was the default.

Point taken, Then again Signal has lot more people reviewing the code than Simple-SMS-Messenger and So if there's any inherent vulnerability or in this context - SMS based exploit then its likely that the former will offer better protection.

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