Hey dmarden, a while ago on this thread you mentioned you were testing a bunch of different SMS alternatives. I'm just curious about which app you decided on and why.
Sadly, they're all horrible in some fashion. Below is my impression of the ones I played with. By all means, NOT a full pro/con list... just the major thing causing me concern.
Go SMS: Community recluse / Possible info-thief
Handcent: Huge partial wakelock issue / less theme-capable
ChompSMS: Very "cludgy", slow.
Pansi SMS: A bit light feature wise, mediocre performance.
They all have an "issue" (not really their fault) where they don't rotate vertical pictures taken with Samsung cameras for MMS, this is because Samsung chooses to use the orientation property instead of saving the picture in a vertical resolution. Only the Samsung stock "Touchwiz" SMS app handles this properly.
Aaaaanyway, to answer your question... I'm not leaving any 3rd party SMS app installed on my phone right now. Just using the stock one. It works (despite being feature-deprived), is safe, and it flips my pictures.
I still install pretty much every SMS app each time they update to see if anything has improved.
---------- Post added at 02:27 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:25 PM ----------
Well to be honest. I like Go sms Alot and really wanted to come up with a way on how this was done. So I went about looking at different ways this could be done. The only way that I came across was to link the accounts by device ID or by phone number. The first was tossed when we found that they were still linked after swapping phones and not installing it on the new phone. That left phone number storing.
I have emailed, PM, and posted along with another mod asking for them to come clean. Best answer we got was "Its complicated".
Now I am not trying to come across like a hate monger but I have alot of numbers in my phone that are not public numbers and can get me into alot of legal trouble if they get out into the open. So being able to trust a developer is a big deal.
Now I know is some countries this type of data collection is completely ok and legal but its not everywhere. I will wait for a few days for a reply.
No argument from me... it's a major concern and I really don't understand why they won't communicate on the topic. This is different than not responding to a feature request or some obscure (not to be read as unimportant) bug report.
As unfortunate as it is, the only conclusion that I can draw is that they have something to hide. It's a problem.