Beeper Mini caused quite a stir recently by bypassing the cloud-server architecture (Apple ID login and Mac Mini relay) and offering client-side connection architecture. It simply means that the app can send iMessage directly from Android to Apple servers. This is something that has never been done before and addresses a lot of serious security and privacy issues plaguing Beeper’s primary app, Nothing Chats, Sunbird, and other cloud-based iMessage solutions.
Turns out iMessage support was just the beginning and Beeper plans to bring support for FaceTime, RCS, Messages, WhatsApp, and more using the same secure client-side architecture. The company has posted an official blog with a product roadmap detailing its plan with the Beeper and Beeper Mini in the coming days. Let’s take a look at the announcement by Beeper and its plans ahead.
Beeper Mini Will Offer FaceTime, WhatsApp, RCS, And More in 2024
According to the roadmap shared by the company, Beeper (renamed to Beeper Cloud) and Beeper Mini will continue to co-exist in 2023. While Beeper Mini is available for download right away with no waitlist, Beeper Cloud will continue to use waitlist to onboard new users. This is because cloud-server architecture is expensive to scale as per the official blog post.
The company says that the Beeper Cloud will stay for now as Beeper Mini doesn’t have any other messaging platform integration yet apart from iMessage and no desktop or iOS apps as well. However, the company plans to phase out Beeper Cloud in 2024 by adding multi-network support to Beeper Mini along with dedicated apps for desktop, Android, and iOS, as seen in the roadmap above.
The company has also posted a rough product plan that it says will be subject to change. According to the list, the company is already working on integrating much-requested features into Beeper Mini. These include importing chat history, text search, block list, chat history backup/export, Android chat bubbles, foldable or tablet UI, message scheduling, and more. The company is also working on adding support for FaceTime audio and video calls in Beeper Mini, which could be a huge achievement as it has never been done before.
Additionally, the blog post states that the company will work on adding support for SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, and 10 other non-encrypted chat networks into Beeper Mini using the same end-to-end encrypted client-side connection architecture. The company also plans to update desktop and iOS apps with new design languages and client-side architecture. Once these are done, Beeper Mini will be renamed to Beeper with all users being migrated to it and Beeper Cloud being phased out. The company states that the development depends on the success and subscriber base of Beeper Mini.
