Some observations,
1. At this point its extremely hard to use XMPP - there are too many competing standards that implements encryption (of which a subset has forward secrecy), and if sender server doesn't implement any the other end does, usually falls back to plain text, one can disable it - but this is just too much overhead for a regular user. (food for thought [1])
2. Again, reminder from countless HN comments - there is a PR in works to make GCM optional[2], as soon as its merged, this will be solved
3. Maps seems to the real problem here: this could be disabled after 2? (otherwise, whats the point?)
Conversations is a great XMPP client. It works very well, support inline images, stream resumption and everything.
The OMEMO standard brings the Signal protocol to XMPP and it works great. I use Conversations for my hacker friends who refuse to install Signal (GCM dependency!) and surprisingly, I'm not missing a lot.
Now we only need a desktop client that supports the same features... And iOS (but TextSecure is making progress there)
2. Again, reminder from countless HN comments - there is a PR in works to make GCM optional[2], as soon as its merged, this will be solved
3. Maps seems to the real problem here: this could be disabled after 2? (otherwise, whats the point?)
[1] https://whispersystems.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ [2] https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/pull/5962
edit: formatting, forward secrecy not e2e