How is that different from the usual way of having a password as your way of accessing your phone?

This is one of many reasons you should use a password of some kind that you keep inside of your head to unlock your phone rather than a biometric that people can use to unlock it against your will.

In my opinion, relying on upgrading users automagically to an encrypted and secure protocol isn’t good practice. If someone wants to use an encrypted chat, they should do so consciously. It will only cause confusion otherwise.

This is my theory for why they ditched this feature - the ultra-concerned about privacy superusers don’t approve of its messiness, even though in practice it’s the main engine for user growth.

Do people still use SMS these days though anyway?

I would have thought iMessage, RCS and separate chat apps like Whatsapp, Signal and WeChat would have largely replaced SMS by now.

SMS, MMS, iMessage and RCS are all compatible with each other and mostly used interchangeably and are the main way people text each other (in the US anyway). You just have a phone number, and when people text it with any of those formats you receive the message and respond the same way.

Right, the idea was that you could use Signal as your SMS app, and so whenever there was someone else doing the same you’d automatically upgrade to Signal. Whereas now I never have those auto-upgrades, any new contact I am just stuck on SMS with.

I’m still just so furious at Signal management for removing compatibility with other text apps. I used to be constantly growing my Signal network, now it’s a slowly shrinking rump that I never add anyone to.