WhatsApp on iOS cripples user experience without access to OS contact list. You cannot create groups, and cannot initiate a chat with anyone, even by phone number. It works if someone else messages you first or adds you to a group.
> cannot initiate a chat with anyone, even by phone number
as stated before, i can initiate convo by number just fine. it's just that i can't edit the identifier/handle and so it's always shown by number. thankfully most ppl have set their profile pic public, but it gets messy pretty fast.
Well I’ll be darned. They must have changed that recently or I didn’t update WhatsApp for a while, it definitely used to lead to a non-ideal state screen fairly recently. Props for the pointer!
For people as confused as I was about the above link - after spending 5 minutes trying to figure out why visiting it gives me a 404 page, I eventually got out my phone and tried pushing that link to Android activity system, and then I discovered: it's meant to be wa.me/[an actual phone number goes here] - like wa.me/12345678912345.
If you type https://wa.me/your_own_phone_number (replace your_own_phone_number with your number) you can get into a chat with yourself. Useful for misanthropes, introverts, or for having a place to store information.
Because WhatsApp has a sound e2e implementation enabled by default, is more trustworthy than Telegram and less liable to be influenced by Russian government? Keeping contacts out of it is just hygienic.
