Signal removing SMS support on Android

[linkboy]

Summary

Yesterday, the developers of Signal announced that they're going to be removing SMS support from the Android version of the app (the iOS version never supported SMS due to restrictions placed by Apple).

 

Quotes

Quote

 In order to enable a more streamlined Signal experience, we are starting to phase out SMS support from the Android app. You will have several months to transition away from SMS in Signal, to export your SMS messages to another app, and to let the people you talk to know that they might want to switch to Signal, or find another channel if not.

 

My thoughts

Personally, I don't think this is a good idea, especially in the US, where SMS use is still pretty high due to iOS (and iMessage) high userbase. iOS users aren't going to switch off of iMessage and now Signal lost its ability to message with them (unless they have Signal installed).

 

It's also going to be hard from them to break through the dominance that Whatsapp has in places.

 

All this is going is do is help even more establish Google Messages as the dominant chat platform on Android since you need SMS support to communicate with iPhone users. 

 

Sources

https://signal.org/blog/sms-removal-android/

[captain_to_fire]

I think it’s fine if Signal will phase out SMS since one, it’s not secure unlike encrypted chats that Signal is using.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

A while back I tried using Signal to handle SMS so I could talk to the dummy apple people who refuse to get signal in the same place that I talk to everyone else. It was a bad experience and ultimately I switched back to the default app for SMS.

 

So no loss, since this wasn't a solution to that problem anyway.

[Dracarris]

People still use SMS?

 

smh

[WereCat]

52 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

People still use SMS?

 

smh

Yes 

[goodtofufriday]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

People still use SMS?

 

smh

I wasnt aware that there are people who don't.

[Dracarris]

16 minutes ago, goodtofufriday said:

I wasnt aware that there are people who don't.

Well yes I receive some from time to time for 2FA codes.

 

Apart from that, there is

 

Signal

Threema

Whatsapp

Telegram

iMessage

FB Messenger

IG Messenger

Teams

Hangout

Zoom

Skype

Slack

Mattermost

 

what did I forget (all cross-platform except for iMessage)?

[WereCat]

34 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Well yes I receive some from time to time for 2FA codes.

 

Apart from that, there is

 

Signal

Threema

Whatsapp

Telegram

iMessage

FB Messenger

IG Messenger

Teams

Hangout

Zoom

Skype

Slack

Mattermost

 

what did I forget (all cross-platform except for iMessage)?

except many people still don't use data regularily or at all

[justpoet]

SMS is dead, nobody cares except the 3 people that still like their flip phones.  Just get the Signal app, then it is all better, more feature complete, and encrypted.

[linkboy]

8 minutes ago, justpoet said:

SMS is dead, nobody cares except the 3 people that still like their flip phones.  Just get the Signal app, then it is all better, more feature complete, and encrypted.

 

Sadly, it's not in the US. SMS is going to stick around as long as its the fallback for Apple's messaging app.

 

It's the only way to send a message from an iPhone to Android (or vice-versa) without installing a 3rd party app (which iOS users won't do).

 

 

[Dracarris]

23 minutes ago, WereCat said:

except many people still don't use data regularily or at all

excuse me, what? which country would that be?

5 minutes ago, linkboy said:

installing a 3rd party app (which iOS users won't do).

excuse me, what? no, just no.

[ComradeIT]

Signal is basically lying in this blog post, if you ask me. I don't know why they released the announcement like this. None of the explanations for it make any sense at all. It took me a while to find this forum post: 

https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms-support-from-signal-android-soon/47954/57

 

The real reason SMS is getting chopped up is because of the way new operating systems are handling SMS.

This new push for something called RCS on Android. RCS is Google's proprietary chat protocol that automatically upgrades SMS messages in their pre-installed app. 

 

--------------------------------------------

 

This basically started with Apple's walled garden. Their iMessage app did the same thing - it automatically upgraded your SMS conversations on iPhones to their proprietary protocol used by their pre-installed app. Apple doesn't allow third party apps access to this protocol, which is why Apple users have always complained about Android users sending them "green bubble" SMS messages. Also, Apple doesn't allow you to install third-party SMS apps. That's why the Apple version of Signal has never had support for SMS conversations (and it's also why all of my friends with Apple devices hate Signal and hate me for making them use it). 

 

Google has been trying to get Apple to give them access to their messaging protocol for a while, but they wont. RCS is Google's response to Apple, but it's basically the same thing. There's a device-specific pre-installed chat app that only works on Google phones and partnered devices like Samsung. The app automatically upgrades SMS conversations to RCS messages. The protocol doesn't support third party apps, and this breaks Signal's SMS support when it automatically upgrades a conversation to RCS. 

 

-----------------------------------------------

 

I think everyone smells something fishy going on here, but it's not immediately clear what that is, and Signal's blog post doesn't explain any of this. It's just some PR baloney that tries to list out a few excuses as to why SMS is bad, but doesn't name the true culprit. This has left a lot of people confused and pointing fingers. 

 

There IS something fishy going on. This is a deliberate attack on SMS as an open and public protocol. It's a planned enclosure by private corporations to edge out open source alternatives to SMS. Signal is being forced to drop SMS support by Google the same way they were forced to drop it for Apple, and the people responsible for this are primarily Google and Apple. Signal has just been incapable of communicating this reality for some reason.

 

Tech monopoly: ONE

Open source, privacy, human rights, and all things beautiful: ZERO

[WereCat]

5 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

excuse me, what? which country would that be?

It's not about country but older people that couln't care less and just use their phones to call and send SMS. I know many that still use old phones that you have to scroll trough SMS to read it whole because it can't even fit on the display. And I'm not talking about elderly people.

[porina]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Well yes I receive some from time to time for 2FA codes.

That's about the only use I have for it. Some places use it as a notification method. The only ones I send are to reply to that when rarely needed.

 

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

what did I forget (all cross-platform except for iMessage)?

Discord

Line - I think this is still a thing but might be more Eastern.

[linkboy]

10 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

excuse me, what? no, just no.

I'm talking 3rd party chat apps, not 3rd party apps in general. 

 

This is predominantly a US issue (where iPhones are the top selling phone).

 

What incentive does an iOS user have to install a 3rd party chat app, when the built-in one works great with the majority of their contacts? iMessage is the most used data based chat platform here

 

SMS, sadly, is the only messaging protocol that fully works on both iOS and Android out of the box.

 

A huge reason Signal has more users on Android is because of its SMS support. I can download it, set it as my default chat app, move other friends/family using Android over to it and not lose the ability to message an iPhone user (and bonus points if I can get them to install Signal).

 

Removing SMS support isn't going to cause more people on Android to move to Signal, instead, it's just going to move people to other platforms like FB Messenger or Google Messages. 

 

[ComradeIT]

38 minutes ago, justpoet said:

SMS is dead, nobody cares except the 3 people that still like their flip phones.  Just get the Signal app, then it is all better, more feature complete, and encrypted.

 

2 hours ago, Dracarris said:

People still use SMS?

 

smh

 

Surprised to see... well... any support for this change at all actually. I've read through half a dozen forum threads about this change, and this is the first time I've seen someone who didn't think this was a terrible idea. 

 

I guess the situation regarding SMS changes a lot depending on the country. In some countries, data is actually cheaper than SMS, which are often paid. I don't know where you are, but here in the US, SMS is still widely used. We put our phone numbers on our resumes. We record them as emergency contacts for user agreements. We contact our insurance agents with phone numbers. All of this critical communication is done with phone numbers, and that means SMS. Also, here if you don't have a data connection - either because you don't pay for it or you simply don't have signal where you are, then SMS is usually cheaper and easier to get a signal for. 

 

This is a lot like the headphone jack issue. Everyone recognizes that this ancient technology is broken and needs to be replaced, but it's clearly a bad idea to remove compatibility for it BEFORE a suitable replacement option is available. This change isn't going to get people to stop using SMS. It's more likely to get people to stop using Signal and revert to SMS, since that's what they need to use for everything else already. 

[linkboy]

1 minute ago, ComradeIT said:

 

 

Surprised to see... well... any support for this change at all actually. I've read through half a dozen forum threads about this change, and this is the first time I've seen someone who didn't think this was a terrible idea. 

 

I guess the situation regarding SMS changes a lot depending on the country. In some countries, data is actually cheaper than SMS, which are often paid. I don't know where you are, but here in the US, SMS is still widely used. We put our phone numbers on our resumes. We record them as emergency contacts for user agreements. We contact our insurance agents with phone numbers. All of this critical communication is done with phone numbers, and that means SMS. Also, here if you don't have a data connection - either because you don't pay for it or you simply don't have signal where you are, then SMS is usually cheaper and easier to get a signal for. 

 

This is a lot like the headphone jack issue. Everyone recognizes that this ancient technology is broken and needs to be replaced, but it's clearly a bad idea to remove compatibility for it BEFORE a suitable replacement option is available. This change isn't going to get people to stop using SMS. It's more likely to get people to stop using Signal and revert to SMS, since that's what they need to use for everything else already. 

Here in the US, SMS isn't anywhere close to dying. 

 

Apple has no plans to replace it as the fallback for iMessage, so that makes it the only chat service that can be used on iOS and Android without installing a 3rd party app.

 

Until either Apple releases iMessage on Android (definitely won't happen), Google opens up their RCS API (most likely won't happen), Apple adopts RCS (most likely won't happen), or carriers implement a cross carrier, cross platform chat service (won't happen), we're stuck with SMS.

[goodtofufriday]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Well yes I receive some from time to time for 2FA codes.

 

Apart from that, there is

 

Signal

Threema

Whatsapp

Telegram

iMessage

FB Messenger

IG Messenger

Teams

Hangout

Zoom

Skype

Slack

Mattermost

 

what did I forget (all cross-platform except for iMessage)?

In my personal circles I use discord and sms. 

in my work i use teams and sms

family is strictly sms

 

This is true for most persons i know as well. 

 

Im an IT admin at my work so its not as though im unplugged. 

iMessage is debatable i feel as it presents as sms to users, and basic users (IE most people) understand it as sms texting that iMessage specifically.

[wanderingfool2]

Overall I think it makes sense to drop SMS from Signal, it doesn't work on iPhones and in general Signal always to me seemed more of a security type of messaging app...one where if you cared about what others would see then you would use Signal.  Having SMS just muddies the water as then you have a mixture of encrypted and non-encrypted messages.

 

31 minutes ago, ComradeIT said:

Signal is basically lying in this blog post, if you ask me. I don't know why they released the announcement like this. None of the explanations for it make any sense at all. It took me a while to find this forum post: 

https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-blog-removing-sms-support-from-signal-android-soon/47954/57

 

Basically, the real reason SMS is getting chopped up is because of the way new operating systems are handling SMS and this new push for something called RCS on Android. RCS is Google's proprietary chat protocol that automatically upgrades SMS messages in their pre-installed app. 

Oh, the irony of you calling Signal lying and then posting getting so much of your information completely wrong in your first sentence after the accusation.

 

1st) RCS is NOT Google's proprietary chat protocol.  It's like trying to claim that the web browser was MS's propriety thing (back when IE was big).  Google is the major player, which effectively means they can put in their own ideas into the standard, but RCS was the idea/design of multiple companies.

 

2nd) From my understanding, they don't allow access the the API on the phone...but in theory they could implement the RCS protocol themselves (just would be a whole lot more work and debugging to do)

[Dracarris]

43 minutes ago, ComradeIT said:

I guess the situation regarding SMS changes a lot depending on the country. In some countries, data is actually cheaper than SMS, which are often paid. I don't know where you are, but here in the US, SMS is still widely used. We put our phone numbers on our resumes. We record them as emergency contacts for user agreements. We contact our insurance agents with phone numbers. All of this critical communication is done with phone numbers, and that means SMS. Also, here if you don't have a data connection - either because you don't pay for it or you simply don't have signal where you are, then SMS is usually cheaper and easier to get a signal for.

I'm not advocating for removing SMS completely, especially as a fallback solution for the things you named. Also I don't get what phone numbers have to do with SMS, even without SMS you can still receive calls from someone. Plus, services like Whatsapp use the phone number for identification of someone. If you have the phone number of someone, you can text them on most of these messaging services.

45 minutes ago, linkboy said:

I'm talking 3rd party chat apps, not 3rd party apps in general. 

I understood that, my answer remains the same. There are literally ~100 iOS users I know and a grand total of zero of them think about installing a 3rd party messaging app being a no-no.

43 minutes ago, ComradeIT said:

This is a lot like the headphone jack issue. Everyone recognizes that this ancient technology is broken and needs to be replaced, but it's clearly a bad idea to remove compatibility for it BEFORE a suitable replacement option is available. This change isn't going to get people to stop using SMS. It's more likely to get people to stop using Signal and revert to SMS, since that's what they need to use for everything else already. 

BT headphones and codecs have come a long way, and I'm pretty sure less than 1% of people complaining about BT audio have access to music sources that get limited through BT codecs at all.

But back to topic, viable alternatives for SMS do exist today. Keeping a stock SMS app in the phone for fallback purposes is no issue.

45 minutes ago, linkboy said:

What incentive does an iOS user have to install a 3rd party chat app, when the built-in one works great with the majority of their contacts? iMessage is the most used data based chat platform here

As an iOS user, I use iMessage to communicate with

 

0

 

of my contacts.

 

If this is a US issue then this is once again a point where the US finally needs to move on. SMS can stay as fallback, and if a green message bubble is a problem for you, I have absolutely zero mercy. That is beyond braindead.

[rcmaehl]

1 hour ago, justpoet said:

SMS is dead, nobody cares except the 3 people that still like their flip phones.  Just get the Signal app, then it is all better, more feature complete, and encrypted.

Just because I'm on the bleeding edge of smartphone technology with my folding phone doesn't mean that I use SMS.

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

except many people still don't use data regularily or at all americans

Fify

[linkboy]

25 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

As an iOS user, I use iMessage to communicate with

 

0

 

of my contacts.

 

If this is a US issue then this is once again a point where the US finally needs to move on. SMS can stay as fallback, and if a green message bubble is a problem for you, I have absolutely zero mercy. That is beyond braindead.

Here in the US, you'd be the minority.

 

iMessage is the most used chat platform by the majority of iPhone users. 

 

That's where the entire crux of the problem is.

 

The majority of iPhone users are happy with iMessage here and won't use anything else, and it's not available on Android. 

 

If iPhone users weren't happy with iMessage (or if iMessage was on Android), we wouldn't be having this discussion. 

 

And I agree that the whole blue/green bubble thing is stupid, but at the same time, it's highly effective. Nobody wants to be the odd person out. Hell, I'm the only Android user at my work and the thought hasn't crossed my mind at some point just due to how convenient it would be.

[Dracarris]

18 minutes ago, linkboy said:

The majority of iPhone users are happy with iMessage here and won't use anything else, and it's not available on Android.

iMessage is SO far behind feature-wise compared to basically any 3rd party messaging app, I just don't understand why it would be so widespread used. Exactly how many years after all the others did they finally manage to add group messaging? Plus the text density in the app is horribly low.

[ComradeIT]

31 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Overall I think it makes sense to drop SMS from Signal, it doesn't work on iPhones and in general Signal always to me seemed more of a security type of messaging app...one where if you cared about what others would see then you would use Signal.  Having SMS just muddies the water as then you have a mixture of encrypted and non-encrypted messages.

 

Oh, the irony of you calling Signal lying and then posting getting so much of your information completely wrong in your first sentence after the accusation.

 

1st) RCS is NOT Google's proprietary chat protocol.  It's like trying to claim that the web browser was MS's propriety thing (back when IE was big).  Google is the major player, which effectively means they can put in their own ideas into the standard, but RCS was the idea/design of multiple companies.

 

2nd) From my understanding, they don't allow access the the API on the phone...but in theory they could implement the RCS protocol themselves (just would be a whole lot more work and debugging to do)

The important thing is the "walled garden" effect that I'm talking about, and that part is absolutely true. There is no RCS API for third party apps, so your second point is wrong. https://www.xda-developers.com/google-messages-rcs-api-third-party-apps/

Technically, RCS is not Google's own proprietary protocol exactly. It's a protocol they're leading the development for, and it's something you have to be invited into, which is why Samsung is allowed to have their own RCS pre-installed app, but Signal can't adopt RCS. 

 

The accusation of lying that I'm making is based on this PR edited nothing-burger of a blog post where they don't explain any of this to misinformed readers like yourself. Instead, the blog post acts like SMS compatibility is something nobody really wants in the first place. It doesn't address the seemingly obvious reality that a huge point of adoption on Android for people is SMS backward compatibility. 

 

Either Signal is ignorant about how the userbase feels about this feature, or they're neglecting to address the issue at all and pretending it doesn't exist. That's lying. It disrespects the readers, disrespects their users, and it disrespects you by assuming you won't think critically about their decision to drop a feature with no explained beneficial tradeoff. Most importantly, it runs defense for the tech monopoly behind the issue that is directly attacking your right to privacy. 

 

20 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

BT headphones and codecs have come a long way, and I'm pretty sure less than 1% of people complaining about BT audio have access to music sources that get limited through BT codecs at all.

But back to topic, viable alternatives for SMS do exist today. Keeping a stock SMS app in the phone for fallback purposes is no issue.

I use my BT headphones ~10 hours a day. I love them, and it's a clearly superior technology. The analogy I was making was to the rollout of this technology. We didn't get good bluetooth headphones until AFTER the headphone jack started getting removed from devices. This was clearly a backwards way to do things, and the conversation about removing jacks should have happened only 1-2 years ago after a lot more people had access to good wireless alternatives. 

 

More importantly, the analogy is about how Apple removed the headphone jack and then immediately sold wireless headphones that were ONLY compatible with their propriety wireless protocol. They jumped the gun AND used it as an excuse to attack the public, open alternative. Now they have a wall garden around their proprietary headphone devices that use their proprietary protocol and can't be used on third party devices.

 

Where the analogy breaks down is that bluetooth was still a thing that was available at the time, even if most people weren't using it yet and didn't have devices that used it yet. In this case, there is no alternative technology to SMS that third party devices can turn to. Instead, Apple is forcing their iMessage protocol the same way they did before and the only alternative is Google's RCS, which is equally locked down. People aren't ready for the switch, AND there's also nothing reasonable to switch to that doesn't serve the monopoly. 

 

To spell it out: Headphone jacks are SMS. Air Pods are Apple iMessage. Apple removing the headphone jack is Apple blocking third party SMS apps. And Bluetooth WOULD BE Google's RCS, except RCS isn't accessible for third party apps either.