My totally unbiased mini-review of Telegram, compared with WhatsApp and Signal with which I am more familiar.
@SauRoNZA inspired me to at least try it out. This is simply my impression as a user combined with a not too thorough read of what is available on their website r.e. privacy and security.
Kudos to you for being objective and open minded in trying it and doing so quite thoroughly as well.
[*]The default colour scheme is hard on the eyes. I do like that you can change it.
Android or iOS? I’ve never had an issue with the default so I wonder if Android is maybe different?
I do find Signal a little cleaner and prettier overall however.
[*]Instead of the same default blank person icon that you see in WhatsApp when someone hasn't got a profile picture, in Telegram it's the person's initials in a coloured circle. These colours are strange and diverse, it looks weird when I'm used to something more homogeneous. (Signal suffers from this as well.)
I consider this a very clever accessibility feature which helps me more easily distinguish people. Especially in group chats.
[*]Stickers. Hated them in 2015, still hate them, and the app seems to encourage use. I like the fact that you can disable recommendations and stop animations from continuously playing though.
I don’t personally use them but don’t mind seeing them. And as you say there are some options to customise it a little.
[*]I like the granularity available in setting permissions for groups. However I don't like the fact that you can't see a breakdown of who has seen your message and who hasn't. WhatsApp and Signal both do this, so it seems a fairly glaring omission.
I also find that quite odd.
[*]The fact that "secret chats" aren't available on the desktop is annoying. I understand that this is due to the architecture of the service being different between WhatsApp/Signal and Telegram, but it's a minor minus for me.
Get a better desktop. They are supported in MacOS so I can’t only imagine they can’t be fully implemented elsewhere and therefore to keep their promises of it being secret it’s not available.
Also it’s only ever one device to another specifically for security. If I start or accept a Secret Chat from my Mac it stays only there and doesn’t exist on my phone.
[*]Regarding chat histories.
One thing that always irked me with WhatsApp was the fact that you either had to keep the entire chat history forever, or clear the entire thing. There was no option to retain the last say 6 months (other than going back and deleting old messages manually, ain't nobody got time for that). Signal gets this right, you can configure it to prune messages older than a certain amount of time, or just by a certain number of messages, or to keep them forever if you choose. Perfect.
Telegram both wins and loses in this regard. I like the fact that it can clear old messages off your device, even as soon as after 3 days, but there doesn't seem to be a facility to trim your "cloud stored" messages as such.
Not a problem for me at all, I tend to always flush my conversations on all these things every so often and never back them up when moving devices.
You could somewhat get around it using the Saved Messages function.
[*]Telegram's ability to have multiple accounts in the same app is cool. WhatsApp and Signal both fail on that one. Would be especially useful if you have phone numbers in multiple countries as many expats do, so you can maintain contacts using both numbers.
Not a feature I need any more but an excellent one to have it I ever do again.
[*]I also like the fact that you can use the same account say from your phone and tablet. Always annoyed me that WhatsApp couldn't do this.
Always been my biggest annoyance with WhatsApp is the whole phone relay function. Telegram works natively and without my phone even being on, on every signal device I own.
I want to like Telegram. Really I do. The fact that they can decrypt everything that I keep in their "cloud" makes me just a little uncomfortable though. Perhaps they can but don't, and they have more discretion than Swiss Bankers, but I have no way to verify that.
The "unlimited" cloud storage is also a bit suspicious to me, especially when you can transfer large-ish files via Telegram. It's got to get paid for somehow.
I think I will reserve final judgement until I know more about how they plan to fund the thing. Once the monetisation strategy becomes clearer, I may re-evaluate.
One certainly can understand this and it’s not my place to tell you to get over it or not be paranoid.
I believe it’s still privately funded at present with plans for ad based revenue this year, or possibly paid for access like WhatsApp once was.
I would not partake in a monthly subscription plan, but would happily throw $10 at them once off.
