Bugged Out: Nothing App Removed From Play Store Just Days After Launch

Just a week after launch, Nothing has pulled its Nothing Chats Beta app from the Google Play Store, citing that the company is delaying the launch until further notice due to several bugs in the current app.

For the uninitiated, the app promises to allow Nothing Phone 2 users to use iMessage to communicate with iPhone users, even if they’re running Android. However, to do so, the Nothing Chats app partnered with Sunbird, which requires you to sign in with their Apple ID to enable these features.

Additionally, Texts.com founder Kishan Bagaria revealed that the Sunbird app does not use HTTPS. instead, “credentials are sent via plain HTTP”. Bagaria further added that Sunbird’s “backend system uses an instance of BlueBubbles, which does not yet support end-to-end encryption.” However, Sunbird has also sent detailed responses to Bagaria, one of which refutes the concern about sending credentials over plain HTTP.

Sunbird said: “HTTP is only used as part of the application’s one-time initial request that informs the backend of an upcoming iMessage connection iteration, which follows through a separate communication channel. Sunbird has focused on security from the start.

Nothing has yet published an official response to Texts.com’s detailed post about Nothing Chats.

Shortly after Nothing released the Chats app, Apple announced that it was finally going to start supporting RCS to improve text-based conversations with Android devices. It supports features like sending high-resolution media files, read receipts, write detectors, and more. RCS functionality is expected to come to the iPhone next year and will continue to work alongside iMessage, and this move will give Android users an official alternative to apps like Sunbird, and now using those apps may no longer be necessary.