Note for Americans: here WhatsApp is the de facto communication standard. Literally nobody uses SMS/iMessage/Facebook messenger/signal. And carriers still charge 2 euro for a MMS which completely kills iMessage/RCS (if accidentally send MMS, it’s expensive)
I switched phones and instead of copying manually /Android/data/media/com.whatsapp I used the new feature of pairing via qr code.
Besides that’s a not very well designed feature (you need to start transfer on the old phone before logging in the new phone) because they really want to store unencrypted backups on Google drive, the transfer completed in a short time.
Maybe too fast, I was expecting at least one hour to transfer the 5000 photos 10gb, instead it completed in 20 seconds.
So I told myself, ok photos not transferred, I’ll just do that manually and directly put them in the photo archive on my PC rather than keep them mixed with all the “happy holidays” trash.
I browse the old phone to /Android/data/media/com.whatsapp and… It’s empty. Wiped clean after the “successful” transfer process!
Luckily I had set syncthing (the fork on fdroid, the one on play store doesn’t have access to whole storage) to have a full overnight backup! On my PC I still had all the photos, almost deleted too as I noticed that I didn’t set the “trash can” option
Conclusion: go to download syncthing fork from fdroid and have a safety net from mistakes like this
i also have a subscription that includes everything, but the fact is that in italy, no carrier offers a plan that has even just 1 MMS included each month. Even the most expensive plan with the most expensive carrier does not include a single MMS.
1 MMS = 2 euro = imessage and RCS are dead
that’s now, 15 years too late to revert the “i need to be careful or the carrier will fuck my wallet” mindset that everyone got
Even if my carrier tried charging me for a MMS, fools on me if they do succeed since I’m PAYG.
If they manage to fool you into paying for them? Fool on you for signing up to contracts that allow that behaviour. And the fact that you’re looking for a solution to this is very “blinkered”.
