I’d argue Facebook messenger is the IE of messaging apps. It’s worse than WhatsApp in possibly every way, and it’s the main form of communication in my country.
Curious what you use instead? Been looking for something that’s convenient to use, full resolution pictures and videos, desktop apps, etc. Sadly, WhatsApp is currently my leading choice with this news.
Family currently uses Google Chat and it’s pretty terrible. Buggy on iPhone and no desktop app.
Signal is a great alternative to WhatsApp. Images sent aren't going to be full quality and will go through some compression of course, but the final sent picture is still going to be leaps and bounds over the garbage that WhatsApp sends. When going through old pictures on my camera roll, I can instantly tell what was sent/saved over WhatsApp compared to Signal due to just how pixelated it gets.
WhatsApp takes so long to implement basic features that all of its competitors has that I'm convinced that its codebase is a horror show and breaks every convention there is, and every features requires a full rewrite of a core part of the service.