We all know that Apple had considered bringing iMessage over to Android at some point, but then quickly realized that it is one of the services that has locked millions upon millions of users to the iPhone and decided against it. I’d be shocked if Apple ever brought it to Android at this point.
That leaves 3rd party services to continue to try and bring iMessage to Android in secure ways that you can trust and that Apple won’t immediately shutdown. You remember Beeper, right? Well, we now have Sunbird, a familiar name in the iMessage to Android space that has brought its messaging app to Google Play for you to test out, assuming you trust it.
If the name “Sunbird” doesn’t ring a bell, maybe the tech company Nothing does. Yes, that Nothing, the one owned by Carl Pei. Sunbird partnered with Nothing back in 2023 to bring iMessage to Android through an app called Nothing Chats. The app launched to Google Play in beta and was so insecure and threw so many red flags, that it was pulled within 24 hours by Nothing, only to never be mentioned again. They promised to fix bugs and revisit, but they really did just let it disappear into the ether.
So now Sunbird is going public on its own, without Nothing along for the ride. Their Sunbird messaging app is indeed on Google Play now and it is promising secure iMessage on Android, with blue bubbles and everything.
Their website is pretty lean on how this whole situation works and what they are doing behind-the-scenes to connect to Apple servers in order to trick them into thinking your Android phone is sending as an iPhone. They claim they don’t store any messages, that you only need to login with your Apple ID once, and that nothing is left behind if you delete your account.
They also claim that your messages are encrypted throughout, which is basically where they ran into issues last time:
Your messages are encrypted on your phone before they leave it, encrypted in transit over certificate-pinned connections, and encrypted at rest on your device, using strong AES-256 encryption. On the final leg to an iPhone, your message is protected by Apple’s iMessage end-to-end encryption, which Sunbird never modifies, intercepts, or weakens.
I installed the app and thought about setting it up for science, but it really does ask for your Apple credentials and that can be a tough thing to just give up, especially knowing the history of Sunbird. It also only comes as a 14-day free trial that requires a payment method upfront to get going on that. If you subscribe, it’ll cost you $2.99 per month or $24.99 per year.
There are some other things to note too. The screenshot below talks about setup troubles you could run into, that iMessage through Sunbird doesn’t actually work with your phone number, that outbound reactions are broken, and more.
My suggestion here, now that this app is public for anyone to use, would be to let the security folks get their hands on it and provide feedback. It didn’t take long for them to find issues last time and I’d imagine they are diving in as you read this. We’ll give you an update on the situation if one comes.
Google Play Link: Sunbird
Read the original post: iMessage on Android Arrives Via Sunbird, Again
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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