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GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

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Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#221

Post by gib444 »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #219
gib444 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alpha lowers the expected level of polish and stability - it doesn't make every regression equally acceptable. It is a reasonable criticism even when released to the alpha channel. Further, I believe it's reasonable for users' expectations to be influenced by what the project itself communicates about the development process. > People sometimes. I have experienced many (relatively minor but some annoying) bugs in Gra…

Conflicts with the common definitions of alpha versions I'm familiar with but definitions differ, of course. Glad you're not among the gOS haters though!

Pointing out regressions wouldn't make someone a hater. That would be a nonsense accusation and a childish conclusion to draw.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#222

Post by j1elo »

Walf wrote: post #97
j1elo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just reading from the barrier here, and not knowing what it even looks like, but reading your description I can immediately agree that it is a bad design. There's only a handful of critical details in a call history, and absolutely no reason for any UI to implement them as secondary or tertiary details: Whether it was in- or outbound. To/from what contact. The date and time. 2 taps for some other extra info such…

>not knowing what it even looks like Clearly. >There's only a handful of critical details in a call history And they're all there: profile pic, contact name, indicators that show incoming/outgoing + missed/connected, which SIM, a redial button, how long ago (which after about a week shows the date), Tapping the middle expands the row (no obstructive pop-up) to show Block, Message, & Details buttons. The reason it has…

Thanks. There's no better way to check how it is than having it on hand.

I'd argue against relative dates because that's an opinionated design that requires cognitive overhead on the user. A young person might be able to mentally translate, but older ones tend to have it more difficult. Usually, opting for relative dates tells us about the designer's lack of experience with different groups of users than the normative one.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#223

Post by gib444 »

getpokedagain wrote: post #81
gib444 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alpha lowers the expected level of polish and stability - it doesn't make every regression equally acceptable. It is a reasonable criticism even when released to the alpha channel. Further, I believe it's reasonable for users' expectations to be influenced by what the project itself communicates about the development process. > People sometimes. I have experienced many (relatively minor but some annoying) bugs in Gra…

This is somewhat true. I expect more regressions from released commercial software. I suspect there are fewer regressions per release on graphenes alpha messenger than there are in googles message's app.

You make a good point: as a project becomes more commercialised, you can expect regressions like this.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#224

Post by phh »

mewse-hn wrote: post #4

Does it do RCS?

For the context, the vast majority of carriers do RCS with Google's RCS servers (https://github.com/phhusson/rcs-scanner). I'm a bit rusty, but to my knowledge the only exceptions are Jio in India, all Chinese telcos, and some Japenese telcos.

Of course it is relevant privacy-wise (Google still gather a lot of metadata about who speaks to who and when), but that's not even the reason I'm mentioning it.

In the RCS specification, there are three lines on a killer-feature: device attestation. A server can whitelist which devices are allowed to connect to it. And of course Google uses this, allowing only Google-certified devices and Apple devices.

And then, there is actually one RCS client for Google's RCS servers. Because Google Messages doesn't use RCS, it uses a custom protocol based on protobuf. My personal guess is that this protobuf is a 1-to-1 matching with actual RCS, and it's both-way compatible. But still, that means that potentially the Google device-attestation won't work with an RCS client.

Sibling comments say that GrapheneOS plan on implementing it. I think it can reasonably work. TBH I'm expecting that giving a LLM the publicly available information about RCS on microG should give a working "send message" within a day (even when using Google apps rather than microG, it's just that the microG work explains the API). And once RCS work in GrapheneOS' message app, it should be pretty straightforward to port to microG, so yay. However I have to admit I'm not optimist about how long it will keep working. I'd say we are two years away from Google enforcing RKP device integrity for RCS, and uh, good luck passing that.

Of course, I'm hoping that, in the EU, the DMA will break this Google/Apple-only device-attestation, but I'm not aware of anyone pushing that ATM.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#225

Post by subscribed »

drnick1 wrote: post #142
subscribed wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Messaging, high impact. Messaging can be replaced with one of the hundreds decent messaging apps. Unlike the backup app which is utterly unusable, untrustworthy and frankly crap. And CANNOT be replaced by anything else. As it stands it's impossible to have reliable backups in GOS.

I know this isn't the solution you are looking for, but there is a fairly simple workaround and IMO it is superior: set up a Samba server or a Nextcloud instance, either at home or in the cloud, place it with behind a Wireguard tunnel, and don't store anything on the phone itself other than apps and things like maps for OsmAnd that can be redownloaded if lost. The Nextcloud app can automatically sync photos or other…

You're right, this is not a solution.

And I'm syncing some of the app data already, but that is not a replacement for the OS apps.

Most of the data cannot be synced like this.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#226

Post by subscribed »

microtonal wrote: post #171
subscribed wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Messaging, high impact. Messaging can be replaced with one of the hundreds decent messaging apps. Unlike the backup app which is utterly unusable, untrustworthy and frankly crap. And CANNOT be replaced by anything else. As it stands it's impossible to have reliable backups in GOS.

Very few of them will support RCS (I think currently only Google Messages?), which GrapheneOS also wants to support. I agree that a new backup system is also high impact, but there can be more than one high-impact thing, and the Message app is really low-hanging fruit.

Currently only Google Messages supports RCS indeed, so Messages is not a replacement yet.

Personally I don't need RCS so I simply use Textra since forever as it's far better than Messages, but lack of backup is impacting everyone much more - no other app can be used to back up the OS.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#227

Post by blendergeek »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #49
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #40

Everytime I read GrapheneOS news I search for news related to Fairephone. It's such a shame that there's still no official plan for Fairephone to work on requirements for GrapheneOS. The combination of those 2 would be fantastic. It would also open a big new market (I assume) for Fairephone so not sure why there seems no clear sign in that direction at all (to my knowledge).

Everytime I see Fairphone mentioned whenever there's news about GrapheneOS I'm confused as to why people keep on conflating both when they obviously have very different goals.

I agree they are separate. What annoys me is that every time FairPhone has news, there are obligatory FUD comments about how people should stay away from FairPhone because they don't support Graphene.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#228

Post by SkiFire13 »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #49
I_am_tiberius wrote: post #40

Everytime I read GrapheneOS news I search for news related to Fairephone. It's such a shame that there's still no official plan for Fairephone to work on requirements for GrapheneOS. The combination of those 2 would be fantastic. It would also open a big new market (I assume) for Fairephone so not sure why there seems no clear sign in that direction at all (to my knowledge).

Everytime I see Fairphone mentioned whenever there's news about GrapheneOS I'm confused as to why people keep on conflating both when they obviously have very different goals.

Both are for for different niches, but their intersection is relatively big.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#229

Post by folkrav »

armadyl wrote: post #108
topaz0 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if Meta pays phone manufacturers under the table to keep their size large

The overwhelming majority of consumers just prefer larger screens (myself included). People seem to forget that Apple releasing the Mini was them listening to the minority and the sales numbers if it were poor versus the rest of the lineup. And why would Meta even do that?

Honestly, maybe it's a market specific thing, but from having worked for a carrier, the overwhelming majority of consumers just dont know anything about any phone but the brand. They'll come in store looking for "an iPhone" or "a Galaxy", and the employee will usually push them towards whichever phone has the best deal (and very often, incentives to be sold), which rarely happens to be these alternative models like the Mini. The minority who does buy their phones outright or know what they want does tend to gravitate towards larger phones, but the rest typically just buys the standard, base model.

Re: GrapheneOS' rewritten Messages app is released

#230

Post by sicktriple »

antibarbarus wrote: post #199
sva_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I looked into this because my idea of RCS was that it was pretty decentralized direct encrypted communication. TIL that RCS was designed as a fairly decentralized protocol where every carrier could run their own RCS servers, but it didnt get adoption. So Google stepped in and built their own routing infrastructure, and now mostly all RCS is centralized on Google's servers (even if you use an iPhone, because the RC…

In my neck of the woods Google actually disabled some of that routing infra, breaking RCS, I guess wanting to force the carriers to build out parts of it? Needless to say the carriers wouldn’t have any of it, so as it stands RCS is fully broken, has been for some time, and will continue to be. This just shows the fragility of the tech and why I wouldn’t want to rely on it for anything crucial.

RCS has been an absolutely unmitigated disaster, and it's just a black box when it breaks. There's no reason why messaging in 2026 should need to have cell carriers involved whatsoever - everyone's phone is connected to the internet, every phone should have an IP based messaging app by default.
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