SimTether: SIM at Home

Install this on the Android phone you leave at home. It is the other half of SimTether: the iPhone app is where you read. Living or travelling abroad usually means one of two bad choices: pay to roam on your home number, or leave it behind and miss every bank code, delivery notice and two-factor message it receives. SimTether is a third option. Put your home SIM in any spare Android phone, leave it plugged in at home on Wi-Fi, and install this app on it. Every SMS that SIM receives reaches your iPhone wherever you are, and every reply you type there goes back out over that same SIM, from your real number. SETTING IT UP 1. Put your SIM in a spare Android phone and plug it in at home. 2. Install this app. It will ask to become this phone's default SMS app, then to receive and send SMS. Say yes to both. 3. Tap Pair a device and scan the code with SimTether on your iPhone. That is the whole setup. There is no account, no email address and no password anywhere in the product. WHY IT ASKS TO BE THE DEFAULT SMS APP Cross-device synchronisation of SMS is the entire app, and on Android the default SMS app is the one that receives messages first and can send them. Being the default is what lets this phone hand every arriving message straight to your paired iPhone, and put your replies on the radio from the right SIM. This app is meant for a spare phone kept at home, so nothing is lost by it taking the role: it shows every message on its own screen too, under MESSAGES, so the phone is still perfectly readable if you pick it up. WHAT THIS APP DOES - Becomes this phone's default SMS app, so nothing arrives without it - Synchronises every SMS the SIM receives to your paired iPhone, within seconds - Sends the replies you type on the iPhone, as ordinary SMS from your number - Shows the same conversations on this phone, one per number and SIM - Tells your iPhone when a call rings, is answered or is missed - Runs as a foreground service so it keeps working while the screen is off - Shows a pairing QR code, single use and valid for two minutes - Works on any Android 8.0 phone or newer, including an old one in a drawer WHAT IT DOES NOT DO It does not carry the audio of a phone call, and it cannot: it can tell your iPhone that a call came in, and nothing more. It does not read your contacts, your call log or your photos. It has no advertising, no analytics and no tracking, and the app makes no network calls other than to the SimTether relay. ABOUT THE SMS PERMISSIONS This app needs to be the default SMS app and to receive and send SMS because that is the entire function: synchronising the messages that arrive on this SIM to the device you are carrying, and putting your replies back on the radio. It reads which SIM a message arrived on so a reply leaves on the same one. Nothing else is read, nothing is sold or shared, and nothing is stored on the phone beyond the conversations shown on its own screen. BEING STRAIGHT ABOUT PRIVACY Messages are encrypted before they are stored on the relay and deleted the moment they reach your iPhone. But this phone has no encryption of its own, so the relay can read a message while it passes through. That is not end to end encryption and we do not call it that. The full detail, table by table, is at simtether.com/privacy. Free to use. Receiving and forwarding cost nothing. A reply is an ordinary SMS and your operator bills it like any other.