There’s been a lot of talk about Apple’s iMessage in the past few months, considering the increased pressure on Apple to support RCS messages. Apple announced that it will support the standard RCS version but not Google’s proprietary app. That was days before the EU tentatively found that iMessage is not a gatekeeper service in the region. If the conclusion is the same in February, Apple won’t have to open the app to rivals.
Separately, British smartphone maker Nothing brought iMessage support to its phones, only to quickly remove the functionality when the whole thing turned out to be a huge security blunder.
Then we saw the emergence of Beeper Mini from the same company that put iMessage on Android and RCS on iPhone months ago. This time, Beeper Mini comes with a brand new way to enable iMessage functionality on Android. Beeper was able to reverse-engineer Apple’s iMessage. And the result appears to be a safe, private iMessage experience on Android.
Now, Beeper wants to go further than that and bring FaceTime to Android next, which could be another big win for Android users.
The original cross-app chat platform Beeper is still in beta. But it’ll be called Beeper Cloud going forward. The company explained in a blog post that Beeper Cloud originally employed Mac servers to support iMessage. This was before the tech breakthrough that allowed Beeper to create Beeper Mini.
As a result, Beeper Mini is now available to any Android users looking to get iMessage support on their Android handsets. Beeper Cloud still requires an invite, as the cloud server architecture is expensive for the company.
That said, Beeper is already working on various new features for the Beeper apps. Beeper Mini is set to receive support for FaceTime audio and video calls. FaceTime is another piece of software that’s only available on Apple devices, including the iPhone. Like iMessage, it’s likely that Apple will never bring a FaceTime client to Android.
That’s where apps like Beeper Mini might bridge the gap. At least until Apple won’t prevent such cross-platform functionality. It’s unclear when FaceTime support is coming to Beeper Mini, however. It’s just one of the various features Beeper is developing.
Beeper Mini will also support past chat history imports, full text search, block lists, chat history backup and export support, Android OS chat bubbles, support for scheduled messages, and a new user interface for tablets and foldable phones.
Beeper will also add support for SMS, WhatsApp, and Signal. There’s no mention of RCS in the blog post, but it’s likely that Beeper Mini will support it. Beeper plans to fold both Beeper Mini and Beepr Cloud into the same Beeper app at some point down the line.
