Phonemaker Nothing has delayed the launch of its Chats app after it was forced to pull the beta over widespread privacy concerns, the company announced on Twitter (now X).
Several players have noticed privacy flaws, with Kishan Bagaria, founder of Texts.com, describing the app as “extremely insecure”.
His team’s investigation revealed that “all outgoing texts are being linked to a sentry server in plaintext”.
9to5Google tore down the app as part of its investigation, and it found that Nothing Chats doesn’t have end-to-end encryption and that attachments sent could easily be accessed in plain text.
“We’ve removed the Nothing Chats beta from the Play Store and will be delaying the launch until further notice to work with Sunbird to fix several bugs,” Nothing announced in response to the concerns.
“We apologise for the delay and will do right by our users.”
Nothing’s Chats app was designed to solve the lack of interoperability between Apple’s iMessage and RCS messaging.
iPhone Messages doesn’t support RCS, and Android can’t support iMessage because Apple has not opened up the standard.
The messaging platform is built on Sunbird, a unified messaging platform that has been in closed beta testing since the end of 2022.
It lets users access all chats, including iMessage conversations, using a single interface.
Nothing Chats ships with support for several iMessage features, including high-resolution media sharing, group messaging, and typing indicators.
“We understand that the blue bubble vs. green bubble dilemma, especially in North America — although seemingly ridiculous — is real,” said Carl Pei, Nothing CEO.
“Nothing Chats allows for freedom of communication between anyone regardless of their brand of smartphone — which is how it should be.”
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