So, we all agree that making an extra effort to make Android application work better belong to the likes of Google. Great 
Thanks for the report! May I kindly suggest you prefix my username with an @, next time, as in @broncheolus? Then I automatically get a notification on the forum. @nthn notified me this time about that (thanks!).
I’ve made an issue on the issue tracker for this. The most basic fix for this is to make setting the country code mandatory when registering, and that’s quite easy to implement. The second part is a bit more involved, where we should show an error if we’re sending to a local number.
00-prefixed numbers are a separate issue, apparently the 00 dail-out code is not a real standard, but more of a thing in certain countries.
@rubdos, i think the problem was that i had an old version installed, and did not uninstall and clean before update.
i have now uninstalled app and removed .config / .local and now whisperfish works like a charm.
having whisperfish and signal in parallel was not working for me too.
it was either or. seemed like permanent account / device switching
As another data point, I’m using an XA2 with the latest Sailfish and Android Signal app version 5.1.9 and my contacts work just fine.
Hmm, that’s sad, would’ve loved to see why that was corrupted. I explicitly tried to keep compatibility for 0.5 migrators.
Sorry @rubdos for the inconvenience, I will write it behind my ears 
(as we Austrians say) and do better. Thanks for your efforts.
Had never heard that expression, probably because I’m Belgian 
. No offence by the way, just trying to help!