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Comment by SkyPuncher | Hacker News Reader

This is an amazing concept!

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.

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.

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.

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Thank you for the feedback!

Indeed, this is something that I have learned from the comments here: that cophone needs to forward the notifications from the virtual smartphone to the physical one(s). Will put it on high priority!

Doesn't Android allow sandboxed MDMs to be added to the phone? I've seen this when using Island, which basically creates a fake work profile on the phone which is completely separated from your personal profile. For dual apps like a second WhatsApp it worked well, to the point that sharing photos from the second account was a pain because it couldn't see the main file system. And when you don't want it anymore, that whole sandbox can be burned without touching the rest of the phone.

It'd be nice if iPhones had something similar. Not sure how anyone is supposed to use them for work when it comes to apps like WhatsApp and Signal. Or even less work stuff like dealing with recruiters, real estate agents and online dating where you might end up sharing primary contact details with people you don't want to hear from a few weeks later.

Having a VM doing 2FA that you access from your browser defeats the point of 2FA. You carry around a device in your pocket because that's the only way to secure the data inside it.

That seems like a pretty minor issue to fix once you have virtual phones running.

I personally wouldn’t want this to be browser only. I would enjoy it being device bound with a key.

> being device bound with a key.

That's an intriguing idea! Will have to look into it!

Leave the work phone plugged in at office and forward messages to an email inbox (or personal phone SMS) using the SMSForwarder app.

Can't do that. Breaks privacy barriers.

How does a VM not break privacy barriers?

Maybe it means he is not allowed to send work data to personal devices?

Right, but then I am sure the company not going to allow him to run on some random company’s VMs.

I’m realizing I’m arguing in an implicit feature that isn’t being explicitly discussed.

I would expect this service to eventually offer an enterprise feature. Having my employer fully control a VM does not break any data barriers.

Probably the safest way to do this is to plug your work phone in a physically secure location and use scrcpy to interact with it over a remote desktop session to the pc/mac hosting it.

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