That has not been true in forever on either iOS or Android, if it ever was.
It is possible to reply to numbers bot listed in your contacts; and apparently it is possible to initiate chats with numbers by using a web api which triggers a platform specific app action.
But you’d be left with phone numbers as identifiers, and at most the user’s self description which is sometimes they name and sometimes just something like “xxx”
It is possible to reply to numbers bot listed in your contacts; and apparently it is possible to initiate chats with numbers by using a web api which triggers a platform specific app action.
But you’d be left with phone numbers as identifiers, and at most the user’s self description which is sometimes they name and sometimes just something like “xxx”