Beeper Mini is an iMessage-for-Android App That Doesn't Require Any Apple Device at All (liliputing.com) 122
An anonymous reader shares a report: Beeper has been offering a unified messaging platform for a few years, allowing users to open a single app to communicate with contacts via SMS, Google Chat, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, and perhaps most significantly, iMessage. Up until this week though, Android users that wanted to use Beeper to send "blue bubble" messages to iMessage users had their messages routed through a Mac or iOS device. Now Beeper has launched a new app called Beeper Mini that handles everything on-device, no iPhone or Mac bridge required.
Beeper Mini is available now from the Google Play Store, and offers a 7-day free trial. After that, it costs $2 per month to keep using. [...] previously the company had to rely on a Mac-in-the-cloud? The company explains the method it's using in a blog post, but in a nutshell, Beeper says a security researcher has reverse engineered "the iMessage protocol and encryption," so that "all messages are sent and received by Beeper Mini Android app directly to Apple's servers" and "the encryption keys needed to encrypt these messages never leave your phone." That security researcher, by the way, is a high school student that goes by jjtech, who was hired by Beeper after showing the company his code. A proof-of-concept Python script is also available on Github if you'd like to run it to send messages to iMessage from a PC.
Beeper Mini is available now from the Google Play Store, and offers a 7-day free trial. After that, it costs $2 per month to keep using. [...] previously the company had to rely on a Mac-in-the-cloud? The company explains the method it's using in a blog post, but in a nutshell, Beeper says a security researcher has reverse engineered "the iMessage protocol and encryption," so that "all messages are sent and received by Beeper Mini Android app directly to Apple's servers" and "the encryption keys needed to encrypt these messages never leave your phone." That security researcher, by the way, is a high school student that goes by jjtech, who was hired by Beeper after showing the company his code. A proof-of-concept Python script is also available on Github if you'd like to run it to send messages to iMessage from a PC.
The big question is... (Score:3)
The big question is: Do bubbles have the right color when sending a message to apple devices? /s
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It's almost as if.... Apple users are trapped in their own fenced in dimension.
Why are they trying to change this? Keep them in their place! LOL.
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It's almost as if.... Apple users are trapped in their own fenced in dimension.
Oh... "dimension." At first I thought you wrote "dementia". Either way... :-)
[*cleans glasses*]
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If it's a work thing I'd either expect my leadership to force them to let me use whatever phone I own or more ideally provide me a work phone I can shelve when not on call.
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Actually thinking this through further. Any company that requires text based group chat for work and doesn't have an auditable application like slack or teams isn't one I'd work for anyways.
If I lose a friend over my choice of phone, I gained more than I lost.
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Re: The big question is... (Score:2)
Id report them to my leadership. Iâ(TM)m in security, this is a business risk.
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Yeah, this is what Teams/Slack/Whatever is for...
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Unfortunatly it's a bit more complex because if you aren't using iMessage, they can't name their group chats and send hi-resolution videos/photos.
I'm the lone android user so the family has to have another chat open when they want to send any kind of media to each other otherwise the resolution makes VHS copies look like blurays.
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Strange...I'm on chat groups with iPhone and Android users.
It's only the android folks that send and receive low quality videos....but the iPhone folks on same chat seem to be able to send/receive the high quality video just fine...no need to go to a separate chat group as you seem to propose...?
Re:The big question is... (Score:4, Interesting)
You don't seem to understand what's happening.
When you are in a group message and someone on an iPhone sends a photo or video, and there is even a single non-iMessage client involved, it moronically will dip back to 20 year old media codecs (3GPP) that comply with a 20 year old MMS protocol to send it just to that one device through their SMS gateway. It arrives on the android device as a bicubic bitcrushed monochrome shit show that is completely worthless.
However, if just one of those iMessage users sends it in a direct message rather than a group message, it comes across in high resolution color MPEG4 like you would expect.
How, exactly, is that an Android problem?
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It's an Android problem because Apple is very good at making iPhone (and Android users!) believe that it's not an Apple problem.
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The same reason I don't have Facebook installed on my phone.
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I object to Meta's right to exist as an organization. There's no world or circumstance where I'm willing to agree to terms of service for any of its products. Since I live in the USA, Facebook is allowed to collect all the information it can find from other people, but that just means I don't give very much information to anyone else.
I don't use SMS/RCS/iMessage on my personal device, either. Send me an E-mail and I'll look at it when I feel like checking.
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Let's hope you never join a workplace that requires the use of Outlook and Teams, because guess what they collect data too. And even if this doesn't happen, insisting on e-mail is the perfect way to become an underperformer (as seen by the rest of employees) and be the first to be fired.
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I have the good fortune that I am able to dictate terms of communication with others. I like E-mail for accountability and standards of functionality across platforms. If Signal ever figures out how to make an account without tying it to an existing phone number, I'll probably tolerate that for personal communication.
I'd quit a job that forced me to use any variety of SMS or sign up for a Meta service before anyone could fire me.
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I'm pretty much always a contractor working on a specific project. These things are not relevant to my life either.
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I like you.
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"Facebook and WhatsApp belong to totally different categories of apps."
PROTIP They're both owned by the same fucking company.
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I think the reason is that US phone users were locked into contracts that typically "included" everything. You get the phone, "unlimited texts," etc., in exchange for two or three years of bondage. It's "free" so you use SMS and MMS, and iMessage or Google Messages are the apps you use to do that. iMessage isn't the "alternative" to SMS, it's all "texting" as far as the users are concerned.
In Europe twenty years ago you often paid by the text (sender AND receiver). In Canada carriers decided this was a grea
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Haha I think you can figure it out from the context!
I don't know very many people around the world, but the ones I do know outside of Canada and the US all use it. Most common question when wanting to keep in touch with someone I've met overseas is what's your phone number so I can message you on WhatsApp.
It does drive me crazy that WhatsApp is so tied to a cell phone number and a cell phone. You can use it from a Tablet and PC, but they make it involve a phone. Which is silly since all the communication i
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I guess like most people in the US, I don't travel outside the US nor know anyone outside of the US, so have never encountered what you describe.
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At my previous job, about 2013, they hired a new VP who previously was from India. The very first group meeting we had he said "So everyone has Whatsapp, right?" When the ten of us who lived in the US replied with confused looks he gave up. We settled on Skype.
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It's the Facebook commercial version of Signal. You just need a Facebook account to use it.
We just use Signal instead.
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You just need a Facebook account to use it.
You do not. Never did. And WhatsApp is the *only* account in the entire Meta ecosystem which can't be linked to any other Meta account.
Re:The big question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's "WhatsApp"...?
I don't know anyone that uses it...
You didn't need to tell us you're a hermit without friends who doesn't know about something that literally 30% of the population of our planet use.
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I have plenty of friends...most of whom I enjoy seeing and spending time IN PERSON with...but, outside of time together in meatspace, we just text regular like (iMessage/SMS).
So far, haven't hit a snag....
And no one I know has mentioned even knowing what WhatsApp is or suggested wanting to try it.
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In the US, most iPhone users demand that you use iMessage to have group chats with them
Who are these people? Almost all my family and most of my friends use iPhones. I haven't ever been mocked for using Android.
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That's because they're mocking you in their iMessage only chat that you don't have access to.
See, that's the thing. The way I see it, green bubbles are just an excuse. Chances are, if some sociopathic little b**tard is talking about you behind your back, that person is probably going to do that anyway, even if you're able to join the iMessage-only group chat. That person will just do so in a separate group chat that doesn't include you. The problem is not the messaging app. The problem is that the kid is a little b**tard who never got taught to treat other people the way he/she would want to b
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If it was a work thing, I'd tell them to go fuck themselves and they need to use the actual communications solution supported by the workplace - namely, Slack or Teams, or HipChat if you're one of 5 companies fully bought-in on Atlassian solutions, or whatever.
Slack workspaces are free as long as you don't care about maintaining a total history (I think you get 5GB of storage); so if there's some collaboration necessary, use an actual collaboration tool. Not an embraced-and-extended version of AOL Instant
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Well, for one thing, I work on a team that actually functions as a team, rather than petulant children that need to use their favorite flavor of chat app or they whine and pout about it. And if they can't get with that, then they won't be on our team very long, and the team will be better for it.
Secondly, all of our company communications happen on company systems. This means that you use Slack for company messaging, PagerDuty for alerting, Notion for shared documents and collaboration, GitHub for source
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In the US, most iPhone users demand that you use iMessage to have group chats with them (or even plain message exchanges) if the majority of a given social group also uses iMessage. If you aren't obligated to interact with them, that's not a problem, but if you have to because it's a work or uni thing, then you have to get an old iPhone as a second phone so you can have iMessage, otherwise they'll communicate with you as little as possible and avoid adding you to group chats and generally be a total pain to collaborate with while everyone else considers them a good collaborator and gives them good employee/student reviews. This is why "blue bubbles" is a big deal in the US. Fortunately, iOS doesn't have enough critical mass in other parts of the world for that phenomenon to occur.
Yep, here in the UK no-one gives a shit what phone you're using. Anyone trying that level of snobbery would quickly find themselves a Nigel No-Mates.
And we're a country that prides ourselves on excessive and unnecessary snobbery.
My younger colleagues rarely have an Iphone these days, they used to get their mum/dad's hand me down when they got a new phone but that stopped when people stopped buying a new phone every year. Now they have to pay for their own phones, fewer are willing to front up £1
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I think the BIGGER question is...
Does anyone really give a flying fuck what color someone's bubble is on a chat?
I have a few friends that use Android...we text all the time.
About the only problem is, they can't seem to send high quality videos like I can.
Not even amongst themselves (android only chats)...
But aside from that, no big deal. If I really want them to see something in high quality video, I just q
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I don't want videos in SMS (Short Message Service) !
Videos in SMS are just links anyway so just send a link. Nobody has my cell phone number and my SMS forwarding service simply ignores videos/images and what not which is perfect for me.
I have an iphone and only send SMS through my mail to SMS bridge, perfect for me as well.
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Actually...the can't...even between themselves just between the androids....they can't seem to send high quality video/photos.
Apple is dumb? (Score:1)
I thought iMessage required a valid Apple device guid (which can't be faked because it has to match on the list on Apple's side, and you can't reuse known guids because that'll be easily detectable.)
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So can you get one from obsolete iphone 4 or 5 ? There must be millions dirt cheap...
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I thought iMessage required a valid Apple device guid (which can't be faked because it has to match on the list on Apple's side, and you can't reuse known guids because that'll be easily detectable.)
The app contains various keys/values extracted from a Mac that has registered itself with Apple. The example code changes those keys/values from time to time since if "everyone" uses the same values Apple slows the device (as having an excessive usage). As long as only a few individuals were playing with the code that probably worked well enough for experimentation purposes.
The source code also documents a way to get a private set of values derived from your own Mac (or, presumably, an emulated Mac in
Code Change or Lawsuit? (Score:2)
FTFA: The company explains the method it’s using in a blog post, but in a nutshell, Beeper says a security researcher has reverse engineered “the iMessage protocol and encryption,” so that “all messages are sent and received by Beeper Mini Android app directly to Apple’s servers” and “the encryption keys needed to encrypt these messages never leave your phone.”
I'll bet that Apple officially considers that encryption and access a restricted practice of their bu
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'reverse engineered encryption' if it's as the article states is pure DMCA violation. I can't imagine Apple allowing this for very long.
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There's nothing to silence, it's already open source on GitHub. Also they might not even be able to DMCA it because reverse engineering for interoperability is allowed. They could of course improve iDevice detection to make it useless if they care enough.
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Where exactly is this exemption to reverse engineer *encryption* for interoperability for a software vendor? That does not allow for breaking encryption and hijacking it. Breaking the encryption is the primary issue here, but also the terms of service disallow this as well. To touch imessage you have to agree with the terms of service and beeper either has to agree and be banned from reverse engineering it, or they would be violating a number of other laws including corporate espionage.
Look forword to an
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Section 103(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), states that there is no cross-questioning on the legality of reverse engineering and circumvention of protection to achieve interoperability between computer programs.
Does this not apply, somehow, to what is happening here?
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Would probably be easier to buy Beeper and rebrand it as iMessage for Android and just keep the $2/user/month. Would definitely be more user friendly, but I don't think Apple cares about that for this particular user set.
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Considering Apple's track record on unauthorized third party access to their services, anyone who buys this app would do better to just take the same amount of money out in their back yard and light it on fire.
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well, it's a 7-day free trial and then $2/mo.
So if Apple starts issuing takedowns, it will cost potential users a maximum of $2. Oh no.
On the other hand, many people could be paying that $2 to alleviate some engineered pain, while at the same time demonstrating that there is an addressable market for actually fixing this stupid fucking problem.
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It's not so much that losing $2 is a big deal, it's the time and effort spent setting this up and then explaining to all your iPhone-using contacts that they can text you via the e-mail address associated with your Apple ID (since this hack still does not result in your phone number being registered as iMessage capable). Then Apple kills this, and you've gotta go back and tell all your contacts "uh, never mind, just go back to texting me the way you used to."
RCS support finally fixes the problem. I'm not
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1. it takes like 20 seconds to set up. Seriously.
2. it actually registers you as a native iMessage device and registers your phone number with iMessage, so you don't have to tell anyone anything - iMessage will automatically "upgrade" you to a "blue bubble"
3. Should Apple kill it, you de-register your phone number from iMessage the exact same way you would if you switched to an Android phone, and the iMessage service starts sending anything bound for your phone number back through the SMS gateway. This al
What is the benefit of using iMessage? Seriously (Score:2)
As an android user I've been using 1) whatsapp and 2) sms/mms since ~2010 which is when I got rid of my blackberry and it's BBM service. I've never had a need to use it. Apparently my chat bubble shows up as white/blue/green? Nobody IRL has ever mentioned this, but also I'm older than 25
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Clearly you've never tried to send a video in a group chat that involves an iOS user.
It's a fucking shit show that only Apple can fix, or allow to be fixed via reverse engineering such as what TFA is about.
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Clearly you've never tried to send a video in a group chat that involves an iOS user.
It's a fucking shit show that only Apple can fix, or allow to be fixed via reverse engineering such as what TFA is about.
This 100%. My brother, wife & daughter use iPhones but I'm on Android. They've tried to send me photos and family videos over SMS/MMS and it's horrible. And they hate it when I say, "Send those to me over FB Messenger" or whatever. They just don't want to be bothered to have to think about it and take alternative actions accordingly.
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I as an apple user have no clue what phones my friends use. We all communicate on signal, telegram, sms, iMessage, slack, discord, and occasionally a phone call. If I could get everyone to use one method of chat, I'd pick signal.
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Re:What is the benefit of using iMessage? Seriousl (Score:5, Informative)
iMessage turned that on its head. By auto-detecting if the number you were sending to was another iOS device it would shunt the messages over to the iMessage protocol and not use your precious/expensive few SMS messages. The blue bubble became an indicator originally of whether you were using SMS messages or iMessages. That was important because it told you whether you were using those precious few SMS messages. you had or a tiny fraction of your data plan (or wifi).
As time progressed the blue bubble just became a general indicator that some of the other features that were limited to iMessage at the time would work or not, or if you might be able to use FaceTime to call the other person. Photo sharing, reactions, sending contact info, etc.. all have different experiences between two Apple devices and an Apple device and non-apple device.
RCS came afterwards and was pushed by Google to bring in some of those enhancements and to get the phone companies off of legacy SMS/MMS protocols. I credit them for wanting to have an open standard. But, it's my understanding that the phone companies by and large didn't want to invest in RCS. They weren't making money off of text messages anymore. So Google started standing up its own RCS servers and directing many Android devices to those. Thus RCS is a hodge podge of carrier hosted infrastructure and Google hosted. iMessage is still entirely hosted by Apple.
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One thing that I think people forget too
One thing that I think people forget too is that Apple makes apps for Android but not iMessage. Go ahead and pretend that's not for a reason. https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Re:What is the benefit of using iMessage? Seriousl (Score:4, Insightful)
The Google RCS servers are a fallback for if your cellular provider doesn't have their own. I don't see an issue with that, and the Google servers fully support E2E encryption so they can't read your messages. Usual caveats about metadata, but frankly I trust Google with it more than I trust my cellular provider.
The reason Apple is adopting RCS is because if they don't then the EU will force them to anyway. The EU identified iMessage as one of its key platforms, meaning it's a platform that creates monopoly-like conditions and stifles competition by being closed, and for which there are reasonable technical options to open up.
Pool on Apple takedown of this app? (Score:2)
Notice the woa urls? (Score:3)
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> Anyone else surprised that iMessage is still using WebObjects?
Yeah - I was in Cupertino in '98 talking to some folks about moving an East Coast health system over to WebObjects.
I couldn't find anyone less interested in WebObjects than Apple (as a whole - some great developers there at the time).
We had a small prototype of having WO render to XUL in addition to HTML and Carbon and 'streaming' the app to Firefox.
That would have been neat but it wasn't open source and they were interested in anything else
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Anyone else surprised that iMessage is still using WebObjects? WebObjects makes me nostalgic.
Nope. Not even slightly. Unless they have changed it recently, so is their App Store/Music Store/Movie and Video Store/Book Store, and probably their hardware store website as well. That's why there are limits to the number of items that can appear in each subcategory, so new books and apps and music in popular categories are completely impossible to discover unless you specifically search for them by name.
It wouldn't surprise me if everything Apple does has WO under the hood somewhere, if you dig down f
Anybody (Score:2)
Who cares what color the bubble is isn't worth wasting your time talking to.
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I just want to stop receiving potato-quality photos, and especially videos, from iPhone users. It's pathetic. Why are they so allergic to anything but iMessage, I don't know.
iMessage keeps meta data whereas WhatsApp and sms (Score:1)
is the product using the same process as the POC? (Score:2)
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So, you have to run an old MacOS image in an emulator within your phone? Sounds like a lot of BS to get those green bubbles (or whatever color is the bad one).
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That's not at all what he wrote. It briefly instantiates a lifted framework from an old OS on an emulated CPU in order to generate various values needed for creating an iMessage endpoint and encryption keyset. Once.
After you are registered, you have those things and don't need to do it again.
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I can only hope they start breaking iMessage in new and exciting ways for their own users trying to stamp this out. Something to encourage iPhone users to install a frigging second messaging app.
SMS/MMS vs iMessage(data) vs a matter of cost... (Score:5, Informative)
Please educate your friends!
Verizone [verizon.com].
"Standard text messaging charge of $0.20/message applies to messages sent and received in the Nationwide Rate and Coverage Area, except for International Text Messages, which cost $0.25/message sent and $0.20/message received, and which do not use messaging bundle allowances, unless you are on a MORE Everything plan"
Google is more than welcome to try to sell their new "standard" to the 3GPP organ to incorporate into the 6G standard.
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I've pretty much always had unlimited data, text and voice....???
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All plans are not equal.
There are many people that are on WiFi a lot, and don't want to pay through the nose for data and messaging they don't use. For a long time I was on the pay-per-GB GoogleFi plan, and I was paying far less for my phone than others.
Now there are unlimited MVNO plans on the Verizon network that charge the same that GoogleFi did, so we switched up.
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I've been on Cricket for around 8 years. 4 phones for $100/mo unlimited and that includes taxes, etc. They've never raised prices includes 5G+ on my iPhone 14.
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Unfortunately, my house is in "challenging terrain" for LTE / 5G service, so I have to stick to a particular network that sited a tower a half-mile down the hill, which I pointed a directional antenna tied to a cell booster or I get no service at home. I either have to pay out the ass for Verizon, or use a Verizon MVNO for cheaper.
Yay!
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As a European this whole "Pay for SMS received" boggles my mind, and that's from someone who was already in his late teens when SMS started to become a common thing. It was always paid by the sender here, and only the sender. The ability to rack up a bill for someone else should be illegal.
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More than that, they're potentially billing two different people for the same data bits transiting the network if it's two Verizon subscribers on this shitty plan communicating with each other.
Fucking greedy cunts. And they wonder why everyone hates telcos.
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It never ceases to amaze me how shitty US cellular plans are. For £5/month I get unlimited SMS messages. Receiving is always free. I get 500 minutes of voice calls included, so never pay for those. Companies aren't allowed to use premium rate numbers for customer services.
Apple is adding RCS, which isn't a Google standard. It's an open standard. Google did add E2E encryption, but it's optional and uses the open source Signal protocol, if Apple wants to join in.
RCS uses data.
Apple has little choi
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It never ceases to amaze me how shitty US cellular plans are. For £5/month I get unlimited SMS messages. Receiving is always free. I get 500 minutes of voice calls included, so never pay for those.
AFAIK there are no US cellular plans that charge for SMS at all. It's included in the plan, and unlimited. Same with voice minutes. Maybe some prepaid services have limits? I just spent a few minutes searching and couldn't find even a dirt cheap prepaid plan that limited texts or voice minutes. For most of them you have to dig into the details to find any information about SMS or voice minutes at all; they don't bother advertising because everyone has unlimited.
Many US carriers do charge for data, and it'
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So what is xpiotr talking about? They seem to be quoting a website.
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This key info is at the bottom of the wall of text on that page: "© 2014 Verizon Wireless"
xpiotr managed to dig around in searches to find an ancient support page that references plans that you can no longer get.
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Ah, that explains it, and is also quite damning of the quality of moderation around here.
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That would be the price if you could manage to find a plan without unlimited texting included. I'd guess some old, grandfathered-in ultra cheap plans?
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How long did it take you to find a support page from 2014 that references plans Verizon no longer offers?
this is an ad (Score:2)
It doesn't matter (Score:2)
It still requires an Apple ID (Score:2)
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This. You are correct Saloomy.
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"Remind me again where I get the Apple built iMessage client for Android?"
You throw that piece of shit Android in the trash and buy an iPhone.