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Comment by krater23 | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like you have a relatively new smartphone and never used Whatsapp.

Not who you're replying to, but I have a low-end Xiaomi phone and was on WhatsApp since like 2011, and I still enjoy Signal and find it much cleaner.

That does describe me nicely (Well, sort of, my daily driver phone is an iPhone XR - so only _sort of_ new?). But. I also run Signal on a ~6 year old iPad, and I've not noticed it run badly there.

I haven't tried Signal on a budget grade Android phone though. I have a few Galaxy S4s I use for various odd projects, but most "modern" apps run fairly badly on those.

I'm also "looking forward" to a weekend or two's worth of frustration failing to get Signal for Linux desktop running on my PinePhone when it arrives... ;-)

A de-googled Galaxy S4 with LineageOS is my daily driver, and has been for more than two years. Signal runs rather nicely on it.

My last test of Signal was some years ago on a Galaxy S3 mini. Whatsapp wasv running without big problems, Signal had sometimes hangs of two or three seconds. I now use a Galaxy S4 mini, didn't suppose that Signal is performing better now.

And all that with most features of Whatsapp missing(on my last test). Currently I don't see a reason to go from Whatsapp to Signal. Encryption is the same and Moxie see's the Signal-Network as his own where no other client has to connect. So the trust in him is better than in Facebook, but not as good as it could be.

WhatsApp has awful usability and no desktop version.

WhatsApp has a desktop version.

And it's better than Signal's desktop app.

WhatsApp's desktop version is crippled because it requires connectivity to your phone in order to use it. I believe they're working on a client that doesn't require that, but it's not here yet.

I have been trying the beta and it's pretty decent. Still alternate between signal, telegram and whatsapp for different groups/people, but the beta definitely seems better that what was before.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/download-and-installation/a...

That's actually one thing I like about it. The attack surface area is smaller if everything is routed through the phone.

Do you ever used Whatsapp and Signal?

I'm not a WhatsApp user, but the circumstantial evidence of every single non technical friend I have happily using WhatsApp every day strongly suggests its not a complete UX shitfight.

What do you find "awful" about it's usability?

I like Telegram more than either Signal and Whatsapp (security and privacy issues side)

Whatsapp sucks for me because of an unusable desktop client. Their backups system is extremely slow. I've found that messages get sent and received slowest on whatsapp when comparing with other messaging apps even if the gap is almost inconsequential. There's a woeful lack of features that I love on telegram that make the app very barebones and dull. You cannot edit messages. The replying UX is a bit irritating. There's tons of stuff but this is a small gist

Moved to Signal from whatsapp, for me (and very happy to acknowledge others have different needs and likes) signal is way better than whatsapp. Yes, I've a modern smartphone but one of my family group is on an iphone 6 is perfectly happy.

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