Editor Gets Android Running on an iPhone

Posted in iPhone News by admin. Published May 8th, 2010

Editor Gets Android Running on an iPhone

Hacking your netbook to run OS X? That’s so 2008. Modding your iPhone to make it run Android? Now you’re talking.

PCWorld’s David Wang has been documenting his progress porting the full Android OS onto an iPhone 3G. With the Approid (OK, I just made that name up) he can now connect to Wi-Fi, browse the web and send and receive SMS texts. He can also run Android Market apps, as long as they don’t require audio support. After Wang gets audio support up and running, he plans to post the binaries and instructions for anyone to turn their iPhones into Appdroids.

The point? Maybe there isn’t one, other than simply the joy of accomplishing a difficult technical hack. Indeed, the iPhone isn’t the only phone being hacked this way. Recently, Wired.com reported on DIYers modding Windows Mobile handsets to run Android. Connor Roberts, a software engineer, posted a step-by-step tutorial on running the Android OS on the HTC Touch. According to people who have run the mod, the process was extremely easy.

Now that the computer category is blending in with mobile, with ever-more-powerful processors and operating systems, we’ll likely see modders and DIY types focusing their attention on smartphones and tablets. This would be a logical trend succeeding the Hackintosh era. In past years, many curious DIYers, including Wired.com’s Charlie Sorrel and yours truly, have experimented with installing the Mac OS on non-Apple PCs. Perhaps at some point we’ll see someone cram the iPhone OS onto a different piece of hardware, such as the Nexus One.

[Thanks: http://www.wired.com]