Does iMessage work on the Amoeba One?

The Amoeba One is a small glass touchscreen on a carabiner with calls, texts, maps, rides, music and banking, and no social apps (Kickstarter; amoebaone.com). It runs its own Android-based system with its own app library rather than the full Android store. Whether you can add apps of your own is a question backers have asked and not had answered, and nothing on the page covers iMessage or RCS.

If you deregister your number from iMessage when you switch (Apple’s page for that), iPhones that text you fall back to SMS, and the group chats you were in go on without you.

The campaign funded in under half an hour. Single phones are $94 to $129, and the estimated delivery is October 2027. Decaf texts the phone over SMS, which any phone with a SIM receives, so it should work with the Amoeba One the day it arrives.

Decaf is a calm iMessage Mac app that relays time-sensitive and important texts to a second phone. Your iPhone keeps your main number and stays home, plugged in. The Amoeba One gets a number of its own. Decaf, on your Mac, texts the Amoeba One when something can’t wait; the rest waits for when you sit down.

You answer in the same thread. Before a reply is relayed, Decaf asks for confirmation, and it goes out from your main number, as if you had typed it on your Mac. Your group chats stay where they are.

Decaf works while the Mac is awake and online. You will be slower to reply than you were from an iPhone.

Decaf’s setup assumes your main number stays in your iPhone. Four things to decide before you call your carrier.

Already moved your main number to the Amoeba One? Then it isn’t in an iPhone any more, and Decaf has nothing to relay from.