I see! That's better/easier. I hope they've come up with something that still looks decent for the majority of my contacts who don't have or share a contact photo or who (shock) don't use an iPhone.
I know this is cynical but might a degraded experience for your Android contacts be a significant plus of this feature? (edit: I mean for Apple Inc, not for the end user). Like green bubbles.
Maybe, to the extent that people care enough about it to bug their android-owning contacts about it. I don't think that will be a very large number of users, especially since this is pretty trivial compared to the features you lose in iMessage group chats by adding SMS contacts.