Carl Pei and his team at Nothing have just created a new app called Nothing Chat. The Goal? To allow Nothing phones, which run Android, to use iMessage on the Google operating system. The app effectively fools the system into thinking that your Android phone is an iPhone.
The popularity of pretty high in the United States, where friends and family have been discriminated against for the blue bubble (meaning, they are using iPhones) and green bubble (phones other than iPhones) in iMessage. While the rest of the world is using other apps like WhatsApp, Telegram and Line, many Americans are stuck on using iMessage because, well, it is part of the iPhone, and it doesn’t require any additional installations or setup of a new app.
The app Nothing Chat will now allow Android users to use iMessage without any Apple hardware. Nothing partnered with the company Sunbird which is bringing iMessage to Android users. For now, the Nothing Chat app is still in invite-only mode, so only the owners of Nothing Phone 2 can enrol for early access.
Basically, the service works by routing your messages through a Mac inside a data centre, giving you a gateway into the Apple messaging ecosystem. It is not a perfect system, however.
Most of the core iMessage services will work with Nothing Chat, but read receipts and reactions are still in the works.
Cross-messaging services are nothing new – which is why we have apps like WhatsApp and Line so users of different operating systems can chat with each other. But with the new app, Nothing has done what Google has been trying to do – connect Android and Apple users via RCS.
Of course, what Carl Pei and his team are doing may just be a blip in the grand scheme of things, and he may even be sued by Apple. On the other hand, Apple may see a shift in the narrative – that Apple products are superior, and it is better to be in that walled garden; someone just poked through that garden, and that person is Carl Pei and Nothing.
