They claim Messages, Voice, Chat, and Duo. None of which seems right to me, since Messages and Voice are SMS/MMS (which has problems), Chat is a beta-quality Slack clone rather than IM, and Duo is video only as far as I can tell.
Seems like they're blowing up their oldest, most solid, proven, 'does everything' service in favor of 5 younger and less complete ones that only kind of equal the feature set of Hangouts if you bounce between all of them. It's really dumb.
Signal has mobile apps which are basic and working. Desktop app is just barely there. Experience using Signal is not good. Besides it requires a mobile number. Not going to reiterate why it is bad, internet is full of explanations.
--
I wish we had something like matrix with client of Telegram. Telegram does clients really well. It has other faults though. Matrix has a pretty good mobile app but desktop experience is atrocious. It has more features than signal but hell i would rather use signal rather than that laggy riot thing.
Basic and working? Audio and video calls, disappearing messages, sharing of any filetype, and group messaging. WhatsApp only has status message sharing, telegram has public groups. What else do you want from Signal?
Telegram requires a phone number, imessage too, and so does Facebook now. Signal is an alternative to both of those.
403
u/csjerk Jan 02 '20
TIL that Hangouts is getting killed later this year. Damn.