I’d like to be able to chat from an Android phone without a SIM card.

Edit: Since several people have mentioned it, I’m including this note at the top. There are security issues with using a temporary number to register even if it is not needed to maintain the account. Anyone can gain access to the number and use it for account recovery, etc. I’m not an infosec person at all, but this seems pretty obviously bad. Some services will work fine with a landline or other permanent phone number, as long as you retain private access to the number.

Edit 2: SimpleX turned out to be a good fit for me. It was fast and easy to set up, and simple for my family to use. I also like that it is self hostable if I need to set that up in the future. There are some excellent suggestions and useful discussions below, and I appreciate the help. I’ll come back to this thread in the future if I need to switch

  • solrize@lemmy.ml
    3·
    2 days ago

    GNU Jami though I had trouble getting it to work reliably, and you have to install an app. YMMV.

    Jitsi is decent, especially if you don’t mind using their server meet.jit.si (may have changed by now). It uses WebRTC (i.e. you can use it with just a browser) which I think is preferable to a mobile app.

    I think there will inherently be some lag if you’re using a mobile phone at the client side, because of all the codecs, wifi latency etc.

    This shouldn’t be that hard a technical problem especially if you’re ok with audio-only. I don’t know why the existing programs all have probs in some areas. Jitsi is nice to use but a pain to self-host from what I can tell.

    I have a self-hosted nextcloud that has a video chat feature (Nextcloud Talk) but it’s not great.

    I have been wanting to spend a chunk of time looking into the situation and finding a good answer, or at least identifying the trade-offs clearly.