It is now time for the second round of battle between Beeper Mini and Apple. The instant-hit application brought iMessage to Android and was shut down by Apple within a week of the release citing security reasons. A day later, the team announced Beeper Mini is back up and running. It comes with two major changes with one of them affecting the way the app works. Here is what you need to know.
Beeper Mini Resumes Services on Android
In an official blog post, Beeper announced Beeper Mini application is finally back after a small hiccup. Its improved version was initially available only as an APK for sideloading but is now available through the Google Play Store as well. However, there is one major change that makes using Beeper Mini slightly inconvenient.
Beeper Mini now requires users to have an Apple ID to be able to send and receive iMessage on Android. This is because the team has not been able to fix the issue causing phone number registrations to not work. While the team is working on a fix, the app will rely on email addresses for sending and receiving messages.
The second major change is Beeper Mini is now free to use. It was originally released with a 7-day free trial followed by a subscription of USD 1.99 per month to keep using the app. However, users can still pay for the service if they want to support the team.
Here is the official statement, “Things have been a bit chaotic, and we’re not comfortable subjecting paying users to this. As soon as things stabilize (we hope they will), we’ll look at turning on subscriptions again. If you want to keep supporting us, feel free to leave the subscription on.”
Beeper Mini further comes with a couple of improvements. The team says chats will now open at the last unread message. The app’s video player has also been “polished” a bit for improved user experience.
While the return of Beeper Mini is good news for users, the real question is for how long it will stay functional this time around. There is no doubt Apple will start working on shutting down the app’s services once again. The team has officially denied Apple’s allegations that their app poses a security and privacy risk to users. They claim their app does the opposite which is to enhance user privacy and security.
The blog post says Beeper Mini is end-to-end encrypted and its underlying connection method is open source for anyone to have a look at. The team is further willing to share the app’s entire codebase with a third-party security research firm mutually agreed with Apple.
They are also willing to add a pager emoji to the metadata of all messages sent via Beeper Mini. It says this would make it easier for the Messages app to filter messages from Beeper Mini users. We will have to wait and see if Apple accepts these proposals from the app developers.
