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Correction: I mentioned another app that is offering iMessage for Android and stated that it will not be free. I was incorrect as Beeper has announced that the app will be free with a Plus plan that will cost $5-$10/month.
Back in early December of 2022, news broke that a new company was attempting to achieve something that no one else done – Bring iMessage and its blue bubbles to Android phones. Granted, there are some solutions out there that “technically” allow users to use iMessage on Android but they’re clunky and require having a host device running 24/7 to make it work. Yes, there is another app out there that promises iMessage on Android but it’s currently closed beta and we already know that it’s not going to be free when it finally arrives for the masses.
Hello Sunbird
Sunbird launched last year and opened it doors to a select number of Alpha testers while also creating a massive community where users could get their name on the wait list in preparation for a Beta release. As with many products that arrive making big promises, the tech community displayed a fair amount of skepticism and doubt that Sunbird could deliver. Well, three months later and Sunbird is still here and CEO Danny Mizrahi has some major updates on what’s next for this seemingly too good to be true solution for Android users.
For the record, I was lucky enough to join the Alpha testers list and while Sunbird is still working on its many features, I can say that it does exactly what the company promised. I am able to use the Sunbird app for SMS text messages, WhatsApp and yes, iMessages. Now, you may not think that this is a big deal but Green Bubble shaming, shallow as it may be, is very real. iPhone users are often dismayed when an Android user is included in a group chat and all the iMessage features that they know and love are instantly nerfed as the chat is reverted to a standard SMS thread. No blue bubbles, no read receipts, and no ellipses when someone is typing.
Sunbird alleviates this with an all-in-one messaging app that gives you all the features of iMessage when you’re chatting with your iPhone pals. Down the road, Sunbird will add Facebook messenger, Telegram and Signal and Mizrahi states that more messaging platforms are on the horizon. When? Well, according to the latest update from Mizrahi, Sunbird is aiming for a public launch as early as this summer and the best news is that Sunbird has no immediate plans to charge for its service. As a matter of fact, I had the opportunity to sit down with Danny Mizrahi and he told me that Sunbird has been able to scale while bringing the cost down to less than 60 cents per user.
Sunbird has also built a massive Discord community that, at the time of this post, includes hundreds of Alpha testers and thousands of community members anxiously sitting on the wait list. Mizrahi stated that even with its early success, the team is currently ramping up to ensure that the platform capable of on-boarding one million users a day once Sunbird is open to the public. For now, Sunbird is gearing up to start adding 500 Alpha testers at a time to further tweak the platform and make improvements. Mizrahi said that Sunbird users are currently reporting a 93% success rate with logging in and using iMessage but he reiterated that there’s still much work to be done before he’ll be ready to hand Sunbird to the millions of users that will likely be interested in giving it a try.
As you’d expect, Sunbird if very tight-lipped about how the app is delivering iMessage to users. That said, I did take the opportunity to ask Danny if he thought that there would be push back from Apple. He insists that the delivery method is 100% secure and doesn’t violate any of iMessage’s ToS. Speaking of security, Sunbird is touting that the app implements iMessage’s 100% end-to-end and that the only data stored on the company’s servers are the credentials for the Sunbird app itself.
As the on-boarding of more Alpha testers expands, the wait list for Sunbird has swelled to an impressive 100,000+ users with more that 2,000 users signing up on a daily basis. This reflects a reported 35% conversion rate for sign ups which is another great indicator that Android users are serious about having iMessage on their phones. For a bootstrap startup app, this is a good sign that success could be in the cards if Sunbird can deliver the goods.
For the few weeks that I have been using Sunbird, I have run into a few hiccups here and there. Sometimes, the ellipses don’t show when someone is typing but bugs like this are to be expected. This is exactly why the app is still in Alpha testing. If Sunbird is successful in this endeavor, switching between message types and platforms should be relatively seamless and all of your chats will live in one, unified place.
It’s clear that Apple has no desire to adopt the RCS protocol that Google is trying desperately trying to force as the industry standard and it is very unlikely that the former will every release and Android version of iMessage. If Sunbird can make this work, it could be the dawn of a new age in mobile messaging. Unified messaging aren’t new but until now, no company has been able to produce a stable, all-in-one messaging platform that works with everything. I, for one, am rooting for Sunbird. I don’t think we’ll ever see a single standard for messaging but users want all their chats in one place and Sunbird is closer to cracking that egg than any app that’s come before it. Stay tuned for more on Sunbird. If you’d like to join the wait list, you can do so at the link below.
