rolf wroteWhat's your opinion about
telegram.org?
It's like Whatsapp, basically (at first view) leaner, supposedly safer, and it's not owned by Facebook!
They have some nice extras like an API and a minimalistic publishing platform called telegraph.
If I'm going open source, I would go with a fully open source model like Signal, it has Video/voice chat as well, using TURN servers and port punching or Upnp, Whatsapp goes through their servers or upnp if not behind double NAT. Signal's 60fps video chat at 2-8mbit dynamic, switches to 30 under, haven't found better (skype does 1080/30 only on 30mbit as it does quick speed test, while using 6mbit). It does look more life like and less latency, can easily avoid interrupting the person speaking. 1080 vs 720 is not much on 5-6 inch screen, not to mention both will run hard on compression destroying sharpness.
I stopped using Whatsapp for the famous very underrated multiple metadata exploit, tens of CVE reports in one year, silly and avoidable vulnerbalities.
Signal push notification doesn't rely on Google Play Services either, uses websockets to a node, unlike telegram, whatsapp and others.
Had my family and friends try it (the hard part) but they eventually liked it and they invited few others; the common thing I heard from them is how clean the UI is, and very similar to whatsapp. One thing I wish that could be better is group control, simple but functional and I'm using it everyday anyways. I also noticed lately with Signal, telegram, and other apps that generates preview/pip of youtube links is that the previews temporarily stopped working due to Google putting a quota on their API, I'm unsure how Whatsapp deals with this.
I forgot to mention that video/voice chat of Signal and Duo are the only ones that bypasses UAE and KSA DPI firewall throttling without VPN from my experience. Skype, viber and others performs horrible without VPN in these countries.