SMS uses cellular, WhatsApp uses internet. Internet connects you anywhere with one flat rate, cellular may charge extra per message or for international communication.
Signal is better, but everyone’s grandmother is already on WhatsApp and good luck getting them to switch
Back at the turn of the century text messages were exorbitantly priced
Which is crazy because it literally uses spare bandwidth they didn’t use (other than for the clock updates and other housekeeping) and the amount of data used is infinitesimal compared to voice or other data.
This is why it was free at first as it didn’t cost the carrier anything more. This changed quickly when they figured they could charge for it with rates going as high as 20 cents per message in the US. This lead to crazy bills like $5,000.
I remember having only 200 SMS per month and having to ration them carefully because the plans were structured in a way where ordering more resulted in a big price jump.
I was at the tail end of pagers so being able to text was normal but using a cell phone to talk was the next great thing. I was always confused why people wanted to go back to texting when they could just talk.
It wasn’t until I had a phone with a physical keyboard that I finally started texting to any degree. It never made sense during the Nokia era for me because it was slow and unintuitive.
I actually agree with you, why would I want to text on an itty birth screen. Nevertheless, despite all my efforts, I can’t seem to get myself to switch to those short voice memos you can send in Signal and similar apps. My brother is a pro with those, but it just feels odd to me.
I’m in a country where this is apparently still the case. It seems that the major mobile carriers all charge for text messages to other networks.
WhatsApp is free regardless of your mobile provider. Most here even provide free access to WhatsApp that doesn’t count toward your data allotment.
I keep hoping with this anti-American Big Tech push that Europe and other places are doing they’ll get off Meta products. But I’m also not holding my breath.
I work at a company that I strongly suspect had a very serious security breach because of Whatsapp.
During the outage, we were back to SMS and direct phone calling only. After the system was restored, back to how everything was before, caution be damned, lessons not learned.
It’s not bad enough to have that invasive application as the default means of passing information around (messages, photos, video and even audio, of all things!) on work phones, office personel has it paired to their computers, where highly sensitive programs and data is stored.
SMS uses cellular, WhatsApp uses internet.
I think that’s why OP asked about RCS as well, which is also internet but built into SMS apps.
Because the common user doesn’t know what rcs is, it is still sms on their minds.
RCS is very finicky where i live, it can disconnect and fall back to sms at any moment, even with data enabled.
Signal always sounded too good to be true. I won’t be shocked to learn it’s an NSA front I promise.
Their clients are open source, unless you are worried about the NSA being better at decryption than is currently thought possible, the only information you are giving is encrypted traffic, who you are, who you sent a message to, and if their press release are anything to go by, they are trying to muddy the waters of the identification part with moving away from phone # account creation. I’m also a proponent of xmpp for a similar reason, and I think that xmpp is the better protocol, but signal has more concessions to non techies
Because when Whatsapp was born, SMS were paid (and not cheaply). In my country, sending one SMS cost 0.19€ at the time and didn’t allow pics to be send. Meanwhile, with 10€ I could have 1-2GB of data that allowed for tens of thousands of messages to be sent while on mobile data and unlimited messages while I was on a wifi connection.
Its funny that thats the current situation of international phone costs. Sms and calling internationally is expensive while I can download a global(/local to the country) esim giving me data for cheap.
And not only. I can make a voice or video call to my family abroad with any IM app (whatsapp, telegram, signal, discord… pick your poison) for free because I have tons of gb of data in my cell plan. Meanwhile, making a phone call will cost me dearly.
It’s not such a mystery. WhatsApp came out in 2009. RCS would not be rolled out widely on Android until 2019. RCS was not implemented properly on iOS until literally a month or so ago.
Therefore its competition has been SMS mainly, which it is directly better than in every way. SMS is not encrypted. WhatsApp is. SMS (technically MMS) heavily compresses pictures & video. SMS splits up long blocks of text into multiple texts, which may or may not come in the correct order. SMS used to be limited in cell phone plans around the time of WhatsApp’s release, and STILL is in some parts of the world. SMS requires a consistent cell signal which requires a paid monthly subscription, WhatsApp only requires internet. Sometimes it is easier to find public Wi-Fi than a good cell signal in some places, and it was a popular thing for some teenagers to get an iPod touch or parent’s old phone and only be able to use it with Wi-Fi. Then there are stickers & video chat.
People got used to it being the best for at least a decade, and don’t want to switch. Even nowadays, RCS is nearly as closed a standard as WhatsApp being limited to an app. You have to use Google Messages or iMessage specifically. In Apple’s case, your messages aren’t encrypted on their servers unless you specifically request it, and they hold the keys. I suspect Google is the same, despite what they say. And RCS still is routed through your carrier and the receiver’s carrier, who have varying policies.
Of course, WhatsApp doesn’t have zero access encryption for their servers either, and they’re ran by Meta, so it’s nearly a lateral move at this point. The real solution is a better WhatsApp replacement like Signal. Signal is making progress but it takes time.
One thing you missed… WhatsApp took off BEFORE facebook (now meta) bought it. So it had a huge network effect while it was independent.
Exactly, and they’ve been uncharacteristically quiet about it. You have to dig through settings for an option to link it to Facebook or Instagram, and I’ve never got a notification prompting me to. They’ve been hesitant to roll out enshittification too, so most people don’t see a reason to move. Which is why I still haven’t gotten rid of it. I can’t force everyone at once.
Whatsapp requires all of my contacts in order for me to send a message. I can’t just type a recipient in. I hate it.
I have to use it because a lot of my coworkers are in India and that’s what they use.
what progress does signal need? or you mean in adaptation?
Yeah, social adoption mostly. Not needing a phone number would be cool too, but functionality & security/privacy is pretty great. The only thing that could improve it is being decentralized like Matrix, but Signal is more functional as of now so I don’t recommend Matrix as much to people. Signal takes 2 seconds to set up & is visually familiar.
Because SMS sucks, always has, for many reasons
Give me a federated XMPP based messenger with all the same features as WhatsApp and then… Well, I’ll install it but I still wouldn’t use it because nobody is using it
That is the core of the matter: everybody uses WhatsApp because everybody uses WhatsApp
AFAIK WhatsApp is actually based on xmpp
I hate WhatsApp for no other reason than it’s a Facebook product.
Why not Signal?
WhatsApp has been around for a few minutes more than Signal.
Not really, no. Signal was released more or less exactly a year later than WhatsApp (May 2010 vs May 2009), which, if you look at the 17 years since then, doesn’t really matter that much.
However, broad adoption rates in messaging apps are typically achieved by e. g. funny emoji sets vs. encryption, and the early versions of Signal were pretty barebone.
Maybe I should have said “what’s app gained popularity earlier”
Also “WhatsApp’s business model made it marginally easier to use because they don’t care about privacy”
My guess, because of the network effect.
I use SMS specifically because of the network effect. Almost everyone I want to communicate with has a cellphone, so all of them are capable of sending and receiving text messages. There is no need to list my installed messaging apps and compare it to theirs, we just need to exchange phone numbers.
My longest and most active conversations (chatting with my wife or my closest friends) are going to be over a more feature rich app, but if I need to set up a quick chat with 3 or 4 people, I am not going to think what messaging app we all have in common, I will just start an SMS group chat.
Consumers, like voters, are stupid and hold a lot of things more important than values and morals.
cause whatsapp is older than rcs, and costs zero unlike sms
I’ve had SMS messages read to me by a third party, not a cop. I’ve had transcripts of ‘private’ cell calls read back to me by a third party, not a cop.
I survived the entire lifetime of skype without having the same, and I guess I hope the same happens with whatsapp.
Could you share more about this, safely?
RCS is not yet working on my carrier here in Sweden.
And since most people are already using alternative messaging apps, no one really cares.
The question is historical but posed as a tech choice. Convenience is the answer now.
WhatsApp is free (or was it a low-cost one-time purchase? haven’t used Google Play in a long time), SMS tends to cost money.
It was, one of, the first widespread free global messaging services.
So became default for most.
(if you don’t count ICQ, MSN Messenger, Skype, etc…)
“It gives me the complexion of a Disney princess and lets me send weird pictures of my forhead or the ceiling to my friends.” --Teenagers gleefully giving Snapchat all their personal data
