Telegram is way ahead on several fronts - UX, feature rollout speed, message delivery speed, multi-platform support, multi-device message sync, etc. Signal is still improving slowly and is nowhere close to Telegram (in my experience) in any of these areas. Of the three apps I use for messaging, my current position is that Telegram > Wire > Signal.
> sounds like it's generally a tradeoff of UX vs. Security
Not necessarily. Wire has shown that a Telegram like UX is possible with end-to-end encryption, multi-device sync and multi-platform support. It's just that Wire and Signal are slow in catching up and seem like they need a slightly larger team and/or better management of the development.
> didn't know things were that much better in the Telegram world.
I keep trying any new messaging platform like this, especially if it promises privacy and better security. So I'd recommend you try Telegram and see for yourself what it provides. I'm heavily impressed by what it offers and use it as my primary messaging client, but don't like the crypto and the fact that normal chats are not end-to-end encrypted.
> Seems to me though that if you're willing to use telegram you might as well just use iMessage or What's App though?
That depends on which company one is more comfortable with on the privacy front. I don't consider iMessage to be equivalent to Telegram in features or UX (it's actually inferior and has issues with handling SMS as a backup option). WhatsApp being connected to Facebook is a no-no from the privacy point of view.
> Not necessarily. Wire has shown that a Telegram like UX is possible with end-to-end encryption, multi-device sync and multi-platform support. It's just that Wire and Signal are slow in catching up and seem like they need a slightly larger team and/or better management of the development.
To clarify not that it's a fundamental tradeoff that you can't have end to end encryption with good UX, but that the current choice between Signal and Telegram is a choice between security (Signal) and UX (Telegram).
From everything I've read you'd probably be better off trusting iMessage or WhatsApp over Telegram.
