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Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
summary
- The Sunbird app promised to bring iMessage to Android, but it turned out to be a security nightmare.
- The company was inactive for a while, but is now back up and running, with over 171,000 users on its waiting list.
- Anyone who adds themselves to this list is advised to exercise caution before trying the “new” Sunbird, at least for now.
In late 2022, we learned of the existence of a new Android app called Sunbird, which promised something many Android users wanted: iMessage on Android. While no company other than Apple could actually port iMessage to Android, Sunbird claimed to make it easy (and free) to port iMessage by essentially bridging your messages to a virtual macOS machine. Sunbird quickly gained a lot of attention, and the app was skinned as Nothing Chats and shipped with the Nothing Phone 2.
Unfortunately, the service barely worked and ended up being a security nightmare on top of everything else: Just a few hours after Nothing Chats was available, it was removed from the Play Store and disabled on the Nothing Phone 2. Soon after, Sunbird itself was put on hiatus. We’ve written about this whole fiasco in detail, which you should read about.
A few months later, in April of this year, Sunbird mysteriously announced its return. The company said it would re-release the beta app with “comprehensive enhancements to Sunbird’s backend infrastructure” that made it more secure and private. The company announced today that it had officially opened access to its waiting list, which now has more than 171,000 members.
Obviously, most of that waiting list probably signed up. in front Nothing Chats fiasco. Either way, if you get an email welcoming you to Sunbird in the next few days or weeks, you might want to be extra careful before trying it out. Sunbird makes big claims about its “promise to deliver a robust, secure, unified messaging experience that bridges the gap between Android and iOS users,” but the company has a history of making big claims that it can’t back up.
member Android Authority The team is on a waiting list and will consider an invite if one is received, but until then, we recommend not trying out the “new” Sunbird without taking extra privacy precautions, such as using it only as a test app.
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