I use an iPhone and my fiancé uses Android. He is not very tech savvy. He does not like to text for privacy reasons. I was going to recommend we get Signal but see others in Lemmy talking about Matrix. Is that better? If so, what app is best that works on both our phones? Thanks Lemmy friends!

  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    If privacy is the ultimate goal, I think Signal is a bit better.

    That said, Signal is doing a bunch of user-unfriendly stuff that turns me off a bit. For example, they had a great SMS integration on Android that they’re now killing for no obvious reason. And more problematic- on iOS there is NO backup/restore functionality. None. So if you lose your phone, all your chat history is gone. It doesn’t backup to iCloud or anywhere else. The ONLY backup or transfer option is if you get a new phone you can transfer data from old to new.
    Android has a full backup/restore function that backs everything up to an encrypted file. No idea why they don’t do the same on iOS.

    Matrix is also better for multiple device access. On Signal, you can connect additional devices (laptop etc) but they are always subservient to the main device. Conversation history doesn’t transfer from the main device to addon devices, although conversations stay in sync on both devices from the point you add the device forward. But if you get a new phone for example, that’s a new parent device, so your desktop convo history gets wiped.
    Matrix on the other hand, no device is primary and conversation history is stored (encrypted) on the server. So backup your crypto key and you can access everything from any device (including a web browser).

    For Matrix- Element is the one to use most of the time…