I heard XMPP is better though. Servers are way less hard on resources, its way simpler and just as secure. Decentralization, you can share all sorts of files and all, but video calls are simply done by another provider like Jitsi
I am using both for enough long time,mutlidevice synchronization it's nightmare in xmpp,also usual xmpp isplaintext.So when u wanna use encryptions like omemo so far not always guaranteed that ur encryption key will be delivered to ur new device which u connected.Also u cannot control sessions.So if u would be hacked u would not be notified,and u don't have ability to kick out this dude session.But yes xmpp more light about resources and works faster for now.
Yeah sessions should be controlled but are a pretty modern feature. Simply using strong passwords or even hardare OTP would be great. But for sure, a downside.
Transferring private keys is interesting, this is pretty userul, true. signal to this day does not work here for me, so I prefer using it as a messenger, for temporary things. Afaik my matrix experience was better here.
Xmpp is long in the tooth, many basic things are missing, like sending a image with a text caption. Or sending a group of photos as an album, instead you can only make many many image posts.
This is true, since the base protocol is dead simple without many frills since its goals is real-time communications, not a chat-specific protocol for humans (TLS is good enough for certain applications of the protocol). That said, most modern clients support PGP & OMEMO with many having the encryption on by default and required is usually an option as well. There were some talks about simplifying the OMEMO setup in the future, but it’s good enough for now. See Are we OMEMO yet? for client suggestions.