Pretty cool application for encrypted messages, security is important to me but Threema is missing out on a huge opportunity to compartmentalize an SMS platform and offer the best of both worlds. I know the intention is to not cause confusion, but there are ways to mitigate that from a GUI perspective to differentiate the two services and it's disappointing to see such an expensive application that is missing out on that opportunity.

Considered this app to replace soon to be gone BBMe (which I used for about 15 years and loved). So far, I am not disappointed. However, few features could be a nice addition (and a 5 star rating) 1. Ability to edit the text message once it was sent and even if read by the recipient 2. Ability to retract the text even if already seen/ read by the recipient 3. Ability to export chats Thank you! Updated on 9/8/24 changing my rating from 4 to 5 stars -the ability to edit and delete texts is great!

Can't recommend this enough. The only thing it's missing is self destructing messages, but that's not really as reliable as you might think. You should always be careful of the things you send no matter what and that you full trust the person on the other end. If you care about your security and still want group texts, then Theema is the absolute best messaging app for you. Not having to tie your phone number or email to your account is a huge plus for me, while for some people it's nice to be able to see all of your pre-existing contacts (which you can still totally do if you want) I prefer not to just have people be able to find me like that. I had some of my friends downloaded it (I even paid for some of them to get it, because it's that good) and walked them through skipping adding their phone number and email, had them add a master password (which you have to enter when you turn your phone on; optional) and PIN. You can set the PIN for individual chats. I have one group with 10 people who exchange books with each other. There are polls, now there's video chat to compliment the phone calls, you can transfer your account between phones, there's a web client, the servers are in Switzerland, end-to-end encryption by default, you can verify and add your contacts phones by scanning their QR code to avoid "man in the middle" attacks, and best of all you can just totally ditch your account; delete everything and start over whenever you want with a new anonymous ID. Seriously, I cannot stress it enough, if you genuinely care about security you need to buy this app and get your contacts to but it. Sure you can get Signal, which is tied to your phone number (not to mention gets part of its funding from the State Department and has a broken desktop app that stores everything in plain texts files) or WhatsApp (which is owned by Facebook and probably collects your data to sell you garbage) for free, but your paying for the real thing when you get Threema.