The Sunbird app was launched in 2022 and allowed Android customers to talk through iMessage with iPhone house owners. Sadly, it shut down a yr later and was pulled from the Google Play Retailer resulting from safety issues. Now, the staff has introduced that Sunbird is again.
The Sunbird staff introduced the app’s relaunch in an emailed press launch, noting that it’s out there to everybody through the Google Play Retailer. Messages despatched by Sunbird customers will certainly present up as blue bubbles on iPhones fairly than the inexperienced bubbles related to Android and different non-Apple platforms.
This app doesn’t simply cease at giving Android customers blue bubbles, based on Sunbird Messaging CEO Danny Mizrahi. The chief claims that iMessage options like reactions, replies, high-quality video, and group administration all work through Sunbird for Android.
What about these safety issues?
In fact, the principle purpose why Sunbird was pulled within the first place was as a result of it was a safety nightmare. Investigations discovered that person knowledge was saved in clear textual content and that the encryption claims fell wanting actuality. This was significantly embarrassing for Nothing on the time, because the smartphone model launched the Nothing Chats app atop Sunbird’s basis.
Nevertheless, the staff has touched on the relaunched app’s safety enhancements:
Your messages are encrypted in your system and in transit, and Sunbird doesn’t hold them, they move by way of solely lengthy sufficient to be delivered. While you message an iPhone, Apple’s personal iMessage encryption carries that closing step, precisely because it all the time has. The know-how behind it’s protected by two issued US patents, with extra element out there on our web site.
We had some questions once we noticed the aforementioned declare that messages are solely retained lengthy sufficient to be delivered. Mizrahi expanded on this in an emailed response to Android Authority questions:
The quick reply: the present app doesn’t hold your messages. Dialog historical past lives on the person’s system and the recipient’s system, not on our servers. A message transferring by way of our infrastructure is protected in transit and launched as soon as it’s delivered. Messages are encrypted on the telephone earlier than they go away it, in transit over certificate-pinned connections, and at relaxation on the system with AES-256. Media will get a tough expiration on our facet: mechanically deleted, usually inside 48 hours and by no means longer than 72. On the ultimate leg to an iPhone, the message is protected by Apple’s personal iMessage end-to-end encryption, which Sunbird by no means modifies, intercepts, or weakens.
Additionally value understanding, because it was a part of the unique concern: when a person connects iMessage, their Apple ID password is used as soon as to arrange the session after which destroyed. We don’t retailer the password, and we don’t hold an authentication token that might allow us to sign up as them later. The continuing session is managed by Apple’s personal Messages software program, the identical method it really works on a private Mac.
Moreover, Mirazhi informed us that an unbiased safety auditing agency examined its rebuilt Sunbird app in a bid to duplicate findings from a 2023 safety report. The agency apparently failed to duplicate these discoveries and reported “no essential vulnerabilities” within the app or backend API.
What else to know concerning the new Sunbird app?
Sunbird isn’t stopping right here, both. The agency will deliver a “Sunbird Intelligence” suite of on-device AI options to the app. This features a dialog abstract device known as Catch Me Up and an assistant for “easy” actions akin to transferring a chat to a unique folder or drafting a reply. The app can even achieve WhatsApp and Fb Messenger integration. All of those new additions are slated to reach later this quarter.
Eager to attempt Sunbird? I’d personally watch for extra safety researchers to get their fingers on the app first. However, the Sunbird app is out there to obtain on the Google Play Retailer and has a 14-day free trial for brand spanking new customers. In any other case, it’s out there for $24.99 a yr or $2.99 a month.Â
The app relaunch additionally comes some time after Apple lastly embraced RCS, enabling trendy messaging between Android and iOS. RCS and Google Messages nonetheless lack some options you’d count on in a messaging app in 2026, however are these lacking options sufficient so that you can change to Sunbird altogether?
