At this point, none of us even use phones, my family pretty much use Zoom and at work everything is Google Meet, my phone function is basically a dead function at this point.
You can make the argument that I don't truly “owns” the domain name off of which my e-mail address hangs, either, but it's a much better situation than phone number ownership. There, at least, the constraints of ownership (rental) are clearly defined, as is my ability to move it between registrars.
My email represents me, and I fully own it with minimal upkeep costs.
Yes I think they suck, but do they suck more or less than en email? Not clear.
I'm a core contributor at Status, and the team I'm on is currently developing a desktop client[1] to complement the mobile client. We have alpha builds for Linux and macOS, and soon Windows.
Status uses the Waku[2] protocol.
One thing: I don't think it's unusual for a user to have little/no interest in the wallet or dapp browser. In that case they simply use it as a chat app that's focused on privacy and security while ignoring the other features.
