Nothing, the popular phone company founded by Carl Pei, tried to bridge the gap between iMessage and Android with its Chat app. However, it got pulled from the Google Play Store due to privacy concerns. But now, Beeper Mini could emerge as an alternative that will let you chat on iMessage using your Android phone almost as if it is an iPhone.
Palo Alto-based Beeper was founded in 2020 with the aim of aggregating multiple messaging platforms under one umbrella. But it has now launched a new app called Beeper Mini, which according to TechCrunchwill allow users to send and receive end-to-end encrypted chats on iMessage for a $1.99 monthly subscription fee. The team behind the app says they managed this by reverse engineering the iMessage protocol.
“We jailbroke iPhones then dove deep into the OS to see how everything worked. Then wrote new code from scratch to reproduce everything inside our Android app,” said Eric Migicovsky to The Verge. According to him, this makes Beeper Mini a third-party iMessage client that is secure. The app should not be able to see your messages, your contact or your Apple ID password.
You can download the app from the Play Store, and then, there are two ways to sign into the Beeper Mini app, according to 9to5Google. But first, you will have to log in to your Google account, give some permissions and then perform some more tasks including setting up your subscription.
After that, you are given two options for how you can use Beeper Mini. With the first option, you can log in without an Apple ID. You can just use your phone to log into iMessage but this would mean that messages will not be synced across different devices. This is also the default option.
After you select that first option in the setup, you can go to the second option, where you can log in using your Apple ID and use iMessage on other Apple devices along with Beeper Mini on your Android phone. But with both options, Beeper Mini works with the phone number of the SIM you are using on your Android phone.
While Beeper can act like a proper iMessage client it will not support all features. Currently, the company claims its supports threads, replies, read receipts, direct messages, editing messages, high resolution video and images and more. Some features that are not supported include live locations sharing, message effects and FaceTime support.
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First published on: 06-12-2023 at 12:56 IST
