Hi HN,<p>My name is Tudor and I am the maker of cophone. With cophone you can have your private virtual smartphone running in the cloud, complete with a phone number so you can use it just as you use your physical smartphone. And it works from your browser!
Although cophone mainly targets companies, private individuals are welcome! At the moment only US phone numbers (+1...) are available, but more country codes are coming soon. Also having multiple numbers is in the pipeline!<p>Signal app works - just choose "Call" instead of "Text" when verifying your number.
You CAN receive text messages, but some apps that require you to receive one in order to register might still NOT work (i.e. Whatsapp). That's because they might not recognize cophone numbers as mobile numbers so you'll never receive the challenge message.
Main desktop browsers are supported. Chrome on Android also works but on IPhone there're still some issues, esp on older iOS versions. I'm working on it!<p>Cophone is marked as beta because I haven't tested it at scale and there are still some rough edges.<p>I am exploring having a freeware version with a common, shared phone number and an extension for each user. So you'd dial +123456789 followed by #098765 to get connected via PSTN with a cophone user - let me know what you think of this.<p>I'd love to get your feedback! Don't hold back if you have a feature request or something doesn't work as expected for you!<p>If you'd like a deluxe tour please reach out (tudor at cophone dot io) and I'll be happy to show you around!
At my previous company we regularly had need for shared numbers that callers would not know were shared[^1]. We tried using Twilio/etc for this, and it sometimes worked, but we ran into issues in some cases where the systems we were using the phones with banned the use of virtual numbers. I don't know how these systems determine that numbers are virtual, but doing so appears trivial and mostly correct with US/UK numbers.<p>So, question for Cophone, do these phones have a "real" number, or a virtual number? And, perhaps a follow-up, are these VMs with a virtual network stack, or are they physical devices with a real physical SIM/eSIM/modem with screen sharing?<p>[^1]: This sounds nefarious, but we essentially partnered with a lot of retailers, and needed to interact with their customer service and operations departments who were a long way organisationally from those who signed the partnership contracts, and with little scope for deeper integrations. The lowest friction option was to pretend to be a completely normal customer rather than explain our special case setup every time. Fun fact, this is why we used a gender-neutral name on the postal address, so that anyone from our company could call up and claim to be the recipient.
This is an amazing concept!<p>Right now, I carry around two cell phones - work and personal. My use case for my work device is surprisingly limited. I basically need it for notifications and 2FA. For anything serious, I switch to my laptop. However, I _really_ need that work phone.<p>BYOD/Shared devices is a thing at many companies, but that comes with it's own host of issues. Most notably, I don't want a corporate MDM on my personal phone. I also want to be able to let my family use my personal phone without worrying about breaking.<p>This virtual device, effectively lets me carry a single device while having nice, clear boundaries. As long as notifications come through well, this could effectively replace my need to carry a work phone.
Can you talk a little about the legalisms -Here's a few:<p>How did you get an Indial group, what T&C did you sign up to?<p>Does host know you terminate and originate phone from this service?<p>Do you have to make a statutory declaration about EMS geolocation?<p>What's your STIR/SHAKEN/SPAMACT requirements?<p>Do you have KYC and AML licencing?<p>Are you actually a registered telco, and have common carrier licencing?<p>Do you have a warrant canary?<p>I'm not trying to white-ant you. If you go into widespread use, I'm sure these will be asked. Different economies have different regulators and rules.
To be honest I only really need the virtual number, to redirect to arbitrary phones. The stuff Google never bothered to export to these godforsaken European colonies.
I like the idea but from a security perspective this has even more issues. Mobile devices get ratted all the time, even cheap and modest RATs just screenshot the whole screen frequently, how can the site enforce screenshot prevention? Assuming the malware doesn't have a bypass for that of course or simple things like malicious keyboard apps and browsers (defeating the best 2fa)?<p>Practically, it is best to have a work phone with a removable battery you take out when nott working and use for no other purpose. Ideally, smartphones are not fit for any purpose that involves sensitive and highly impactful (you get fired, jailed, divorced,etc...) purposes.<p>But for me, I could actually use this if I am ever forced to use a mobile phone. Even for personal use, i am struggling painfully with android x86 in a vm! I like the product.
if you're getting a lot of "i dont get the point" comments on HN from a very technical crowd, you're probably onto a new market need or WAY off depending :)
I don't understand? If you need a computer and browser to access your "virtual smartphone," what's the point?<p>This looks like a classic solution in search of a problem.
This seems great, and I've always wanted something like this (though for me, the cloud is a dealbreaker). A bit too expensive for my uses, I think the corporate use-case makes much more sense so good for targeting that!<p>I'd prefer to have a virtual machine on the phone where I could isolate apps etc. Would be nice with a second phone number tied to that virtual machine, maybe a sip one could work.<p>But since that doesn't seem to materialize I'm playing with the idea to have an old phone at home and remote into it using VPN+VNC or something from my real phone. Would work in theory but last I experimented with it the experience was pretty bad.
Nice project.<p>Commercially, I would suggest that you white label this at a heavily discounted wholesale rate to VOIP providers. They have existing channels and user base that should allow you to scale without huge marketing investment, and once one or two of them bring your service onboard the rest should buy in. Alternatively, just sell it out to a larger player and move on.
Looks neat, but I'm curious what the actual use case of something like this is.<p>What can you do on a phone emulator running on some server and accessed from your browser that you can't just...do directly on the browser?
Very nice, I like it. As a total ignorant on this space:<p>a) how is this different from Canonical's Anbox in the cloud offering?<p>b) could I use this to run banking apps that won't run in my phone (mainly due to the unlocked bootloader)?
I subscribed but when I try to login I am getting this error:<p>> Something went wrong. If you forgot your password, you can reset it.<p>When I try to reset it I get a link and the link leads to an empty page.<p>Any idea what can be the issue?
I have encountered a lot of problems trying to rely on virtual numbers from various VOIP providers. Very curious how that plays in to your stack. I know for instance a lot of Twilio is default blacklisted, but larger ORGS/ISP's who run essentially the same virtual VOIP (such as Comcast) but at different scale have no problems.<p>Why is there a difference?<p>Who is determining bad VOIP from good VOIP?<p>Are there steps you can, or are, taking to work on having your numbers legitimized?<p>Where are you sourcing your numbers?<p>I'll take my questions off the air :). Thanks!
I've worked in a small consultancy where we'd use our personal phones to talk to clients - mainly using Whatsapp. It was hell, since there was no way I could get away from personal messages during work time and vice versa.<p>This would've been something nice to have at that time - I would be able to, without having two phones, have personal and work related Whatsapp numbers on seperate places (but still accessible when needed).
Ridiculous pricing. Acrobit Groundwire mobile SIP client [0] costs $10 <i>once</i> and is EU based therefore GDPR compliant. Add a prepaid SIP provider, mine charges less than $10/year for the number plus calling costs that are so low I don’t notice then. Once in a while I add $100 credit to my SIP provider, good for several years with 3 numbers. For incoming calls Groundwire send a notification that pops up the app and shows the UI. Works flawlessly, many options for deniing calls, forwarding etc, etc.<p>Some numbers are shared with others, just disable it on my phone and the other person enables it to start receiving incoming calls.<p>I really don’t see the business case for paying $10/$15 per month.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrobits" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrobits</a>
This is pretty cool. I could just carry a laptop around and pull up my "phone app" when I need to, and forego the need to carry around a phone.