Signal has started rolling out Signal Login, an optional registration method that allows users to create a Signal account without providing a phone number. The feature will be rolled out first on Android and will come to iOS later.
As we previously reported, Signal Login is not a free alternative registration method. Signal requires users who choose to register without a phone number to make a one-time payment. The price at launch is $2.99 / € 3.49, although this may vary by region and currency.
The whole ‘OMEMO is out of date’ thing started with Soatok’s blog, however what is less known is that blogger removed a response in the comments from an OMEMO developer who clarified some things (you can it read here), which personally I think was rather odd/bad faith of them to do.
According to that response, there’s nothing really wrong with the older OMEMO 0.3.0, as the developer considers it a stable standard that clients can safely implement, while the newer versions are basically public beta releases that are working toward a stable ‘OMEMO 2’ standard that can eventually replace 0.3.0, and be stable enough for all XMPP apps to implement at once, hence why most apps are remaining on the older version.
I absolutely agree that Deltachat has by far a smoother onboarding process compared to XMPP, and I think for most people, Delta is probably the better option.
Where XMPP shines is if someone needs access to more discord-like features, which is where the the Movim XMPP client (a web app that works across all platforms, Desktop and Mobile) does well, as it was able to use XMPP to have Discord-like servers with text and group voice chat rooms, as well as screensharing. It works quite well for the most part. There is still definitely some UX oddities in Movim that can add some friction, but the dev is quite open to suggestions for improvements, and it’s come a long way in recent months (the discord-like features for example were added just this year).
Good to know, thanks!