At some point I seem to have managed to remove the plain old SMS app in favour of Signal Messenger. Now with Signal dropping SMS functionality and throwing people back to the wolves, I am trying to work out which app I should be using for SMS.
What is/was the default SMS app for Fairphone (FP4)?
What do people in a similar situation recommend and/or are moving to?
I use Signal as my only messenger. But I don’t use it for regular text messages. I use the default app for that, the one that comes with Android (Google Messages). The reason I use it is because of RCS, which is a major improvement compared to SMS. It’s also the reason why Signal ditched SMS, RCS is what people should use. But adding that development is not in the budget or scope of Signal.
There are plenty of open source SMS clients. Such as the Simple Mobile one. I personally prefer the more modern and secure RCS. I also hardly ever use it, most contacts are on Signal.
True, that’s been the final nail in the coffin, but they’ve tried to ditch SMS for years. People confuse SMS and Signal messages all the time, which lead to security concerns and people accidentally getting charged for messages. Signal on iOS also never supported it.
(There’s an interesting interview with their president on The Verge, which touches that topic among others)
Still, I was also one of the happy users of SMS in Signal.
The two contacts I can only reach that way, don’t use devices supporting RCS (otherwise they could just be migrated to Signal), so RCS isn’t necessarily the way forward in all cases, SMS isn’t dead yet
I’m looking for an app to install onto my Fairphone to send (and receive) SMS/txt messages to people that don’t use Signal when Signal drops support for sending SMS/txt messages.