I ’m in a group chat with my wife ’s category : her sisters , their husbands , her parent , and so on . One of them just place a video recording of their immature baby and it bet likea blocky , blurry disasterbecause it had been recompressed to a bantam sizing to go into the carrier MMS limit . one-half of the messages in the chat are schoolbook verbal description of reactions : “ [ person ] Loved an image . ” And it ’s all because just one or two of the people in that group chat have an Android speech sound .
In much of the human beings , this seems gaga . Why are n’t we all onWhatsApp ? But in North America and some parts of Western Europe , this is everyday liveliness . It ’s annoying , to say the least , and Apple has no intention of doing anything about it .
Enter Nothing , the comparatively youthful Android smartphone company that is the second act of OnePlus founder Carl Pei . The Nothing Phone ( 2 ) was just issue a few calendar month ago in the U.S. for the first time , and now the ship’s company hasannounced Nothing Chats , an app that will rent you use iMessage characteristic on that earphone . Kind of . You ’ll desire to read the fine print .
Nothing’s new messaging app is essentially the Sunbird service under a different name.
Update 11/19/23 : It turn out that Sunbird , the service upon which Nothing Chats is based , is a security catastrophe . It has been foundto be station messages in plain text , stack away hundreds of thousands of media files via Firebase , and that all this , including customer contacts , are fairly easily accessible . Nothing has pulled Nothing Chats from the Google Play store while it “ works with Sunbird to fix several bugs . ”
Nothing Chats
Nothing Chats is build in partnership withSunbird , a company that makes a unified message app that is currently still in invite - only beta . harmonize to other testers , Nothing Chat is essentially a re - skin of the Sunbird app , and Sunbird handles all the technology behind the picture .
Here ’s how it work : You sign in to the Nothing Chat with your Nothing account , and then you bond your Apple ID . If you do n’t have any Apple product or service , you could stillcreate an Apple ID for free . That login info is transferred to Sunbird ’s Mac servers where it is used to intercept iMessages and send them to your Nothing natter app ( or the Sunbird app , when it is released ) .
Noteverythingworks just yet . The things that work today are :
Nothing’s new messaging app is essentially the Sunbird service under a different name.
come soon are :
That list is n’t comprehensive ( there ’s no message redaction , for example ) , but it covers the most authoritative poppycock , primarily the frustrative “ someone in here is mess it up for all of us ” annoyances . Nothing user will have blue bubbles , and iPhone user will be none the wiser .
Nothing ’s new messaging app is essentially the Sunbird service under a dissimilar name .
Nothing Phone 2 will soon have its own app that sends and receives iMessages.
Sunbird
Of course , there are privacy concerns with a platform like this . Sunbird and Nothing insist that they do n’t bring through any data point , and all messages are encrypted between their server and yours . But they do head for the hills a server that log into your Apple ID , so they have access to it ( not the username and password , just the login token ) . They could , in possibility , accession anything associated with your Apple ID . That seems unlikely , but it opens up the possibility of your Apple ID being compromised if someone hacks Sunbird ’s servers . Logging your Apple ID into someone else ’s computing machine is always going to be a security department risk .
As have a bun in the oven , several researchers and journalistshave discoveredthat Sunbird ’s service , contrary to its claims , does send message in unencrypted plain text . And while it does n’t store user information as it take , it stores all sent medium files in Firebase ( a Google connection database political program ) . These are well accessed , including contact cards which typically turn back phone number and address . Nothing has pulled Nothing Chats from the Google Play Store and delayed its launching while it works with Sunbird .
If it comes back , there ’s the “ what will Apple do ? ” factor . It ’s unreadable what the company ’s reaction to this will be . It ’s a move that seems almost designed to provoke a lawsuit to get the iMessage whorl - in proceeds into the royal court again . Nothing is a small enough brand where Apple might not reply at all , but it start the door to Samsung or Google striking a similar partnership with Sunbird .
When it resurfaces , Nothing chat will be available as a beta to anyone with a Nothing Phone ( 2 ) , which is a pretty small group overall , but Nothing read it is “ work hard to get Nothing Chats to more places . ” AndSunbird , which provides the technology here , has an invite - only beta and will release its similar app on the Google child’s play Store for use on most Android phones .
Nothing Phone 2 will presently have its own app that sends and receives iMessages .
Mattias Inghe
The iMessage lock-in
Apple drug user love a better canonic “ texting ” experience when messaging other Apple user , without downloading any other apps or open up any other accounts . That sort of ringlet - in has been very powerful in the U.S. and a few other region , and less effective globally .
passably surprisingly , and just Day after Nothing announced its Chats app , Appleannounced it would be adopting RCSlater next year , most likely as part of iOS 18 . That ’ll make life much more pleasant for iPhone and Android users likewise , as photos will look better and group messages wo n’t be blown up by a single Android exploiter .
However , green bubbles are staying , so Nothing Chats might still have a intention . If it ever comes back .
