Pocket Link
Your bot, on your own SIM.
A small adapter that lets the bot hear and speak on your phone's own calls. Your number, your network, your customers' contacts unchanged. The same plug is also the bot's hands on the phone: a touch screen and keyboard the app drives. The first batch is being built now.
- 1
Plug it in
A small pod on the back of the phone, a short lead into the USB-C port. Android sees a headset.
- 2
Pick a bot
Who answers, when, and for whom: everyone, unknown numbers, or only your contacts; office hours; let it ring first.
- 3
Calls on your own number
The bot answers and calls back on your SIM, with the app closed. No Twilio, no root, no new number for your customers.
Android 10 or later. Price is set when the batch ships; the list is not a commitment either way.
How it works
A headset the bot wears.
An ordinary app cannot touch a phone call. A headset can. Pocket Link is the smallest thing that is both.
The phone thinks it is a headset
Pocket Link presents itself as a USB headset. Android routes the call's audio to a headset without asking, so the bot hears the caller and the caller hears the bot, on any Android 10+ phone, with no special permission.
The app carries the audio
A second channel on the same plug carries the audio to the Pocket app, which streams it to the voice engine over the phone's own internet. Nothing is recorded on the adapter; it has no memory, radio or battery.
Answering is the app's job
The app sees the call ring, applies your rules (who, when, how long to let it ring), answers, and hangs up. Everything after the call, the CRM note, the WhatsApp, the follow-up, is a normal bot run.
Firmware 0.2
Hands for the bot, too.
The same plug is now also a touch screen and a keyboard for the phone. The Pocket app sends the adapter finished taps, swipes and keystrokes, and Android takes them exactly as it takes your finger, in any app, invisibly to the app and with nothing to grant. Without the adapter, Pocket's accessibility service can tap for the bot too, but apps can tell, and some banking apps refuse to run while one is on. Nothing on the adapter can press anything by itself; only the app holding its data channel can.
That is what lets a bot use the apps on your phone for you: reply to the customer who wrote on Instagram, post the update you drafted, read your numbers on the dashboards that have no API. Turn it on under Account → Phone control → Allow screen capture; the bot looks, acts once, looks again, and in Agent mode the first tap of a task waits for your approval. Proven on the Motorola edge 60; for your own accounts and your own chores, slow by design.
What it needs
A phone, a plan, a signal.
- Phone
- Android 10 or later with a USB-C port. Tested on Motorola edge 60 and OnePlus Nord N6x; most phones that take a USB-C headset work.
- Account
- Any Pocket plan. Natural voices use your speech keys; the Free voice uses the phone's own recogniser (Android 13+).
- Network
- The phone's own data or Wi-Fi. A call uses about 0.5 MB a minute.
- Power
- Draws about 25 mA from the phone. Rev B leaves the charging port free; rev A, the first batch, does not.
- Updates
- Firmware updates install from the app over the same plug; the adapter reboots into its bootloader and comes back in about twenty seconds.
- In the box
- The adapter, a short USB-C extension for the first batch, and a card with the three steps.
What it won't do
Three honest limits.
Record calls on its own: recordings happen in your account, under your rules.
Work on iPhone: iOS gives no app this much of a call.
Make promotional calls: the bots call people who already deal with you. Calls, the right way.
Open hardware
You can see what it does.
A thing you plug into the phone that holds your customers' calls should not be a black box. The board (KiCad, Gerbers, bill of materials), the firmware, the USB protocol the app speaks, and the test tools are published under open licences: CERN-OHL-P 2.0 for the hardware, Apache 2.0 for the firmware. Build one, change it, or make it work on a phone we have not tried; the compatibility list is the part we most want help with.
Any RP2040 board on a USB-C OTG cable runs the same firmware, so a ₹250 Pico is a working Pocket Link for a first test. The adapter stores nothing, has no radio, and only ever talks to the Pocket app on the phone it is plugged into. “Pocket Link” is our name; the design is everyone's.
Set-up, rules and troubleshooting are in the docs.
Every switch on the Pocket Link card, the answering rules, the two voices, making Pocket the phone app, and what to do when the adapter is not seen.