I got the joke

And if they don’t have anything recent in persistent RAM storage…?

It was a good in between step for non technical users to use it as their singular texting app. So while they still SMS with the unwashed masses, they could still be convinced to do encrypted texts and group chats with others. Doing away with SMS forced all these people off Signal since they didn’t want to jump between 2 apps, it was a huge misstep by them that I think cost them their future.

Interesting, got any recommendations?

Arstechnica has in depth articles on 3, 4, and one about the 5 that should give you a good idea on this. I say this as a pixel owner who’s undecided myself…

Sucks but it’s the best we got

Exclusively? I wasn’t aware they were the only ones who cared about end to end encryption.