Signal announces on its blog, which will soon stop supporting SMS and MMS on Android. The change will specifically affect users who use Signal as their default SMS app.
It has three reasons for this. First, text messages are inherently insecure and can disclose sensitive data. The other two reasons are actually related. It is difficult for developers to make it clear in the UI that they are sending a secure encrypted message and an unsecured SMS. Users are said to often think about sending a secure message via Signal and can easily send an SMS, which is charged additionally.
Users using Signal as their default SMS app on Android will need to select a new default SMS app on their phone. If they want to see SMS conversation history in the new app, they will need to export their SMS messages from Signal to this new app.
According to statement from the lead developer of the Signal Android client Greysona Parrelliho in the Signal Community discussion forum the conversation history in Signal will remain even without export. The export functionality is already available in version 5.53.1.
