Samsung is shutting down messages and pushing the use of Google’s messenger. Are there alternatives? I don’t want to give Google that much personal info to train its AI or to give the regime an avenue to getting my info.
Samsung is shutting down messages and pushing the use of Google’s messenger. Are there alternatives? I don’t want to give Google that much personal info to train its AI or to give the regime an avenue to getting my info.
There are no real alternatives to Google Messages. There are lots of SMS apps. None of them support RCS, because Google won’t let them. So any alternatives will be a downgrade at lest in that regard. Usually a number of others also.
I’ve used most of the SMS apps out there, none are nearly as nice a Google Messages. It’s a shame, but it’s true. I’ve kinda settled on Textra for now, but I’m always looking for something better.
Theybstole QKSMS reply in notification tray feature thats all I remember. Better times.
There’s a fork of QKSMS called Quik SMS that’s still being developed! That’s what I use now.
Textra turned out to be what I use
RCS is just read receipts right? is there anything you’re really losing out on?
Internet-routed media transfers, bypassing some (very) shitty filtering done by carriers. Most will compress and downscale any media sent via MMS. A friend didn’t have RCS until recently, and I always had to remember to send links and not actual pictures because they would always recieve unreadable garbage if I let the carrier transfer it. But really, ANY other messaging app solves this… Signal, Telegram, Discord, even Steam Chat will blow the pants off MMS.
shit, I forgot about the image compression
I’ll get complaints from people they can’t add/remove members from a group chat, and it’s because I’m in the chat, and use Google voice.
RCS is pretty much useless for my country which relies heavily on other messaging apps like WhatsApp/Telegram. I use SMS only for OTPs and stuff so I’m happy without any RCS in my life.
people still use MMS?
I would, if my carrier didn’t drop support for it. For some reason Google Messages RCS doesn’t work with some people for me (even though they have it enabled), so I literally can’t send them images anymore.
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RCS is encrypted in transit & preserves image & video quality that MMS can lose.
E2EE
There are also no others that have a good web ui, Google Messages web ui is pretty great honestly.
That said, they recently rolled out a requirement to log in to to your google account to use that and I think that might be the line I refuse to cross.