AMBIENT

One family

Ambient is a single system with several hosts. The machine contract, the identity model, the visual language and this mark are the same across all of them — a handset is not a different product, it is the same machine on a device that happens to have a radio.

What changed in 1.0.2

A handset can now be given a phone number, which it could not before:

• Settings → Line. Enter the number and a claim code and the machine joins the line. Until 1.0.2 the handset could read a line number and had no way on earth to set one, so an installed app was a complete machine with a telephone it could never be given.
• A line holds several machines. Your desktop and your handset can be on the same number at once and both ring, instead of provisioning one evicting the other.
• Knowing who is calling you now requires being on the line. The ringing endpoint names the caller, and it was answering anyone who asked.

From 1.0.1:

• The dock no longer sits under the gesture bar. From Android 15 an app this modern is edge-to-edge whether it asks or not — 1.0.0 never read its window insets, so it drew its own navigation underneath the system's.
• Much larger type. The whole scale came up: body to 16sp, labels to 13.5sp, readouts to 15sp. The old sizes were tuned on a desktop preview and were far too small in the hand.
• Real touch targets. Every tappable row now has a 48dp floor, and the dock keys are bigger.
• System bar icons follow the theme, so they stay visible in light mode.

Installing it

1. Download the APK on the handset, or copy it across.
2. Open it. Android will say the file came from an unknown source — because it did: this is not distributed through Play.
3. Allow installs from your browser or file manager when prompted, then install.
4. Open Ambient. Allow the microphone when asked — the phone terminates call audio itself, and without it the machine is a speaker.

The first launch runs the boot sequence: ten stages, real work, real timings. It is held on screen for a couple of seconds because the machine genuinely boots in under three hundred milliseconds and a report nobody can read is not a report.

Verify it before you trust it

Check the file you downloaded with shasum -a 256 ambient-os-mobile-1.0.2.apk, or Get-FileHash on Windows. The certificate fingerprint is what ties a future update to this same publisher — an APK signed by anything else will refuse to install over it, which is the point.

What it does on the handset

What it does not do yet

Stated rather than left to be discovered:

• No carrier SMS. Those permissions are restricted to apps whose core function is messaging. Ambient messages travel the Ambient network; the provider says UNAVAILABLE rather than showing you an empty inbox it cannot actually see.
• No background audio. A call runs while the app is open. Surviving screen-off needs a foreground service, and that is not in this build.
• No outbound dialling. It needs an outbound SIP trunk holding carrier credentials, which belong on a server and never on a handset — a phone that can originate billable calls is a phone whose theft is a financial event. Dialling out reports that instead of showing a screen that cannot connect.
• A line has to be assigned. Without one the phone is a complete machine with no number.