Update: The update is now live on the Google Play Store. The original story continues below.
The Beeper Mini vs Apple cat and mouse game continues and the folks at Beeper have responded. Shortly after the Beeper Mini app was blocked by Apple last week, the app is back today with an update that restores functionality – thus with a caveat.
Beeper Mini launched last week to much fanfare, as it allowed Android users to use their actual phone numbers to send texts as iMessages to their iPhone counterparts, instead of an Apple ID email address as other solutions have offered in the past. However, this victory was short-lived as Apple effectively blocked the app three days later and issued a response citing significant risks to iPhone users’ security and privacy.
The Beeper team, however, did not sit on its laurels and worked over the weekend to identify the issue and work on a solution. Within 24 hours, they fixed the problem for the Beeper Cloud version, followed by a fix for Beeper Mini today. During the outage, Beeper also took steps to deregister phone numbers associated with the app.
The fix announced today is not yet on the Google Play Store. The Beeper team claims that they are doing some final testing before officially submitting the update, but those that don’t want to wait can go ahead and download the update directly from the Beeper site. This “fix” does not restore phone number registration, so all users must now sign in with an Apple ID. This means that your iMessages will be sent and received via the email address you have associated with your Apple ID and not your phone number. Beeper states that they are currently working on a fix to bring back phone number registration.
Additionally, Beeper Mini has dropped the subscription model for now. All users were on a 7-day free trial when the app first launched, which would make tomorrow the day the $2 a month subscription would take effect. The Beeper team says that with everything going on, they’ve decided to make the app free until things stabilize, at which point they’ll re-evaluate.
While Apple claimed that Beeper Mini’s techniques “exploited fake credentials” and “posed significant risks to user security and privacy,” Beeper’s team strongly refuted those claims, stating that the app actually “made communication between Android and iPhone users more secure.” What is perfectly clear, though, is that Apple will continue to try to shut down any efforts from the Beeper team to revive the app and restore phone number registration.
