The past week witnessed a tumultuous journey for Beeper Mini, the mobile app facilitating iMessage texts on Android. Apple, the tech giant, halted the iOS to Android messaging service, attributing it to security concerns.
Elizabeth Warren, the Senator of Massachusetts, criticized Apple’s move, expressing disappointment over the discontinuation of an invaluable cross-platform texting service between Android and Apple. The Cupertino giant has faced accusations of exploiting smaller companies for its own gains.
However, on a positive note, Beeper Mini has made a comeback with significant updates to its cross-platform messaging service. Addressing an issue causing message transmission problems, Beeper stated, “We’ve created an updated version of Beeper Mini that fixes an issue that caused messages not to be sent or received.”
Dismissing allegations about posing risks to user security and privacy, the app developers outlined the following updates in its blog:
• Chats now open at the last unread message.
• Video player refinements.
• Due to non-functional phone number registration, users now sign in with an Apple ID, sending and receiving messages via email. Beeper is actively working on a fix for this issue.
• Beeper Mini is currently free for all users, with a potential introduction of a subscription model once stability is achieved.
• In case of issues like 2FA authentication, users are advised to uninstall and reinstall the app.
The latest version of the app is available for download on the Google Play Store. Launched on Tuesday, Beeper Mini swiftly climbed to the top 20 on the Play Store charts, amassing over 100,000 downloads, signifying how badly Android and iOS users were looking for a cross-platform messaging service.
Notably, Beeper Mini is end-to-end encrypted. The team has mentioned in its blog that the cross-platform messaging service enhances the security and privacy of both Android and iPhone devices. Good folks at Beeper have even published a detailed blog post about how the app keeps data secure and private.
Moreover, the developers are ready to share the entire Beeper Mini codebase with a mutually agreed upon 3rd party security research firm in case Apple doubts the security and privacy of the cross-platform application.