Has Anybody Sideloaded Signal? How Does It Work?

Mudita Products
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Hi all,

If you’ve sideloaded Signal, please provide some comments on how well it works. In particular, can you do the below:

  1. Send/Receive one-2-one messages (text, emoji and images)
  2. Send/Receive group messages (text, emoji and images)
  3. Do you receive audio notifications for incoming messages?

Many thanks.

P

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I would also be interesting in knowing how the battery life fares with Signal and not Whatsapp. Other posts have said Whatsapp severely drains the battery. I am hoping Signal doesn’t have the same issue.

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Happy to report that it works great! Of course the fact that there are no visual notifications, which is a bit inconvenient, but at least there’s the notification sound and calls come through on the screen too. I haven’t manage to get the in app camera work, but otherwise everything works as expected :clap:

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Just eagerly waiting to hear what the plan is in terms of OS security (Security Updates). A secure messenger is of no use if the OS vulnerable :pray:

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Thanks for confirming that Signal incoming audio notifications work and calls work.

You mentioned muditaOS security. I haven’t looked into this. Are there question marks over the security of MuditaOS?

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  1. Send/Receive one-2-one messages (text, emoji and images) - works great, gifs, images, stickers, videos, all work
  2. Send/Receive group messages (text, emoji and images): so far I have received all messages and 1 video. Haven’t tested emojis yet but I suppose it works like one-2-one
    3.Do you receive audio notifications for incoming messages? Yes, if you have the app running in the background.
    This drains the battery fairly quickly (I can hardly get through the day).

You can force stop the app through the settings, this will stop it from draining your battery but you won’t get any notifications.

I also failed accessing the camera in-app, but you can still send images you have already taken with the normal camera app.

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Oof. That’s potentially a problem.

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I have both Signal & WhatsApp installed on my Mudita Kompakt. Battery is fine (6-7 days with normal use). There is only an audible notification. Nothing on the home screen. Sending messages, pictures & emojis all works. GIFS show up as pictures.

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How do you make sure it is not running in the background? Just the default settings?

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I’m still waiting to receive mine, @anon80904485, so hopefully someone else can answer this for us.

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I have not experienced this at all. I have BOTH Signal & WhatsApp installed on my Mudita Kompakt & the battery lasts 6-7 days on average.

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Thanks @urszula, it’s good to hear you can still achieve circa 6 days battery life while still having Signal or WhatsApp installed. Please confirm, do you need to have Signal running in the background to receive audio notifications?

I wonder why @brotweg is receiving such short battery life…

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I guess the biggest concern is that the OS on kompakt is based on android 12, which was just dropped from official support (no more security updates from Google). More discussion on the thread I linked earlier.

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do you kill the process of signal/whatsapp each time you finish using?

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@ovy No. It’s just there.

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That’s a sobering thread. I’m new to the Android world, so had no idea about Android 12 being declared EOL. It’s best to keep this thread focused, so I won’t blather about it here. Thanks for the heads up to the thread anyway.

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I’ve sideloaded Signal immediately after the first launch of the phone and in my case the battery lasted for 3 days. During this time I took a few calls (about 30 minutes in total), took maybe 10 photos, exchanged a few text messages, took a few notes. I would call this normal use, and yet I did not reach 6 days. I use eSIM if it’s relevant.

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I sideloaded Signal from Signal >> Signal Android APK . When setting up there was a warning about no play services and extra background processing needed to receive notifications, but I don’t experience any significant battery drain from it. I’m never force stopping it because I do want the notifications. The battery should last me around 4 days or so.

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Thank you. It’s good to know that it’s safe to ignore those messages and it’ll still work. So, you have an idea of projected usage, but don’t know what the actual usage is yet. When you do, please let us know. We’re seeing some very different figures being shared by people.

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I would also like to see someone test out battery drain alongside using Offline+ with Signal installed.

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