Want to run Android on your iPhone? There's no app for that, but one programmer made it happen anyway.
David Wong, who runs the Linux On the iPhone blog, has posted a video to YouTube (video embedded below) showing the dual-boot iPhone in action. On start-up, users are allowed to choose which operating system they want to run, so they'll still have access to iPhone apps and functionality, but will also be able to do things on Android that the iPhone doesn't officially support.
In other words, iPhone owners may some day be able to run Flash on their phones.
Wong describes the current version of iPhone Android as "alpha quality." It's slightly buggy, because Wong hasn't implemented all the Android-specific driver extensions, but everything works. In the video, he demonstrates browsing the Web, receiving text messsages, answering phone calls and playing music.
So far, the hack only works on the original iPhone. "It should be pretty simple to port forward to the iPhone 3G," Wong said. "The 3GS will take more work." Wang also notes a "button shortage" on the iPhone, as he's used the two-way volume rocker as Android's call and home buttons. In the video, I only see him using the iPhone's proper home button to select operating systems and to exit Android's lock screen.
Those drawbacks aside, this is an admirable effort, and it's pretty amazing to see an iPhone running two operating systems. The project is obviously open source and volunteer-developed, which means it could get a lot of help working out the remaining bugs, but it could also languish as people move on to other projects. Either way, seeing the pristine iPhone scrolling through command text in a Linux kernel is a sight to behold.
