What I'm
building next.
I'm not trying to out-feature the existing phone ecosystems.
I'm building a different model and seeing how far it goes.
Google is tightening its grip on Android.
PresenceOS is not Android.
Google is tightening its grip on Android — developer verification, sideloading restrictions, more of the platform answering to Mountain View. My answer is structural, not a workaround: PresenceOS is not Android. It has no tie to Google or to AOSP, so there is no jurisdiction there. PresenceOS devices get their updates from my internal ecosystem, straight from my development environment — no store, no gatekeeper.
A Linux userspace on a Motorola Edge 50 Fusion — no Android, no Google
This part isn't a slide-deck idea. I have a booting Linux userspace on a Motorola Edge 50 Fusion that is completely void of Android and Google: the phone's hardware, the vendor's drivers and hardware-interface layer, and my own systemd userspace running the PresenceOS UI on top. Think postmarketOS, but it's PresenceOS — only PresenceOS.
It's early — a first iteration — but it boots on my bench today. To be precise about the dependencies: the vendor's proprietary driver code is still required at that layer for now; one day it won't be. While this firmware matures, the Android fork — PresenceOS on our own system image, on the moto g56 5G — is the shipping vehicle pilot families get.
myCloud — P2P Distributed Backup
Your data — contacts, messages, settings, photos — gets encrypted on your device, split into shards, and distributed across your trusted companions' devices. Each shard is useless on its own, and I can't read them either: the design is zero-knowledge. There's no storage server to rent, and the backups themselves carry no storage fee by design — your companions' devices are the storage. To be clear about what is paid on PresenceOS: the Guardian Relay service is the paid part; the backup layer isn't.
How much storage you have depends on how many companions you trust, not on a monthly plan. If you lose your device, you restore from your companions; if you forget your PIN, two companion approvals reset it. The backup layer is literally your trust network.
Further out — and I'll label it clearly as vision, not a build in progress — I want a home hub that acts as your family's personal cloud: back up to your people's devices or to your own home network, and never to a third party.
On paperwork: I have filed a provisional patent application with IPONZ for this design. That's an application, not a granted patent, and I'm not claiming to own distributed backup as a concept — the value is in the execution and the integration, not the filing.
@presenceos.email Names
Today your identity on PresenceOS is a keypair on your device plus a POS-ID — a code like POS-IHV105UW. No accounts, no passwords, no 2FA. It works, but a code isn't how people think of each other.
In development: @presenceos.email names for people, replacing raw POS-IDs, running on my own self-hosted mail and identity infrastructure. Same no-account model underneath — just a name a human can actually remember.
MeshCore Integration
PresenceOS will integrate with MeshCore, a distributed mesh networking protocol, for off-grid peer-to-peer communication with no internet infrastructure involved. Your NFC-paired companions become your network nodes.
The practical appeal is simple: it keeps working when the towers don't.
PresenceOS Mesh Network
MeshCore plus LoRa radio plus NFC-only pairing: a dedicated mesh communication layer for PresenceOS users. Messages and calls route through the mesh automatically when the internet is unavailable.
This one is a long way off, and I'm saying so up front. But the target is a phone network that belongs entirely to the people using it.
WiFi-Direct Multiplayer Gaming
Offline multiplayer between PresenceOS devices over WiFi-Direct. No internet connection and no account setup: kids play with their NFC-paired friends on the bus or at school, because the other player is physically there.
Independent Data Connectivity
Eventually: PresenceOS-native, data-only SIM connections — a carrier arrangement where the carrier provides the pipe and nothing else.
The long game is a phone ecosystem that doesn't need a relationship with Google, Apple, or any carrier that treats your data as a product. Carriers will always see what carriers see on any cellular device; the goal is that nobody else gets a look.
A different trade,
not a different skin.
The existing trade is: hand over your data, your identity and your attention, and in return you get a phone.
PresenceOS makes a different trade. Your data stays with people you trust, your identity is a keypair that lives on your device — no account, no password, no signup — and your attention is left alone.
The phone works for whoever holds it. That should not be a radical idea.