Developers boot iOS on Android phones in ‘Hackios’ project
Developers have reportedly booted iOS on Android phones by spoofing iPhone X drivers and running Apple’s XNU kernel in a project tied to the “Hackios” movement; many components remain nonfunctional.
The report said the process involves spoofing an iPhone X’s device drivers and running a custom version of the iPhone’s XNU kernel. It said the idea comes from an enthusiast’s GitHub project that replaces Android’s stock Linux kernel with XNU, Apple’s custom kernel for iPhones and iPads. The report identifies the project as “ios-sweet” in a credit line and as “iow-sweet” in the body of the article.
Many components do not work, according to the report, but efforts are underway to make them usable one by one. A kernel is the core program of an operating system and governs how hardware interacts with the software running on it, the report noted. It also said most popular Android skins now tend to copy iOS in terms of aesthetics, setting the context for the porting effort.
The report said it had seen numerous reports over the last couple of days of Apple’s proprietary operating system booting on Android devices. It did not name the Android devices involved beyond describing a range of them, and it did not provide a timeline for when the nonworking components might be fixed.