Tech giant Apple is extraordinarily stringent on keeping its technology locked into its own software. The iPhone only runs the iPhone OS and, based on experience, the company is hesitant to do otherwise.
But well-known tech blogger David Wang has managed to crack the iPhone’s internal operating system, allowing him to run the Google-developed Android software.
“The iPhone can, in fact, dual boot,” Wang says in the video, available on YouTube. The video demonstrates Wang playing with the iPhone through a dual-boot loader allowing both the normal OS and Android to be available at the same time.
“Even if you install Android, your iPhone can still be used normally,” he said, adding that while the software is in a very early version, “pretty much everything works”.
The move will likely prompt a number of users to do the same, many of whom prefer the iPhone’s hardware and look over a third-party gadget but enjoy the functionality of the Android OS over the limited iPhone OS.
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
