Android – Now Ported On The iPhone

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/04/breaking-android-iphone/

by xonder • 16 years ago

494 120 16 years ago

appadvice.com

iPhone hacker and Dev-Team member Planetbeing just managed to port Google's Android Mobile OS to the iPhone.

doron• 16 years ago

Nice work. There is no app for that.

kgrin2• 16 years ago

I wonder how much the Android code had to be hacked to make that happen - like, once you jailbreak your iPhone and get Android on there, and Android 2.2 comes out, will you just be able to upgrade and be happy, or will it be essentially a "fun thing to hack around with but not something you'd really want on your primary phone" thing?

Batsu• 16 years ago

This is a really good question.

One thing I've noticed when surfing around various Android forums is that people who build new ROMs or port them between phones often include a list of things that do and do not work.

He says in the video that pretty much everything works, which I'm inclined to take with a grain of salt.

jsz02• 16 years ago

I would guess the Linux boot loader will be able to accommodate booting any future ARM6/7 kernels with no trouble. From there it's just a question of drivers. I'm guessing he lifted them from another Android phone using similar hardware. From what I recall everything in the iPhone is pretty vanilla hardware. Those drivers would have to be ported to work on 2.x since that's been one of the major holdups for the 2nd tier Android handsets so far. He also mentions doing some loopback mounts to simulate an SD card. Seems promising for the future.

WildUtah• 16 years ago

I wonder if it could be done as a native app. iPhone runs FreeBSD, doesn't it? Java runs on that so you should be able to run Android.

rev087• 16 years ago

iPhone runs iPhone OS, not FreeBSD. And Android is a Linux-based operating system, not a Java application.

thenduks• 16 years ago

The iPhone OS is based on Mac OS X which is (Unix, but also) BSD-like.

The rest of what you say and it's meaning is correct and unchanged though, of course :)

crux_• 16 years ago

Wouldn't emulating the Android bytecode inside iPhone OS be the opposite of native?

This looks like it boots straight into the actual android linux, so it's about as native as you can get.

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

Jeez, does an honest question like this really deserve -4 votes?

buster2• 16 years ago

-3 +3 now you are even ;)

num0• 16 years ago

similarly I thought, maybe they can chop off SpringBoard from a freshly jailbroken iPhone OS and replace it with the VM and its GUI. That'd be a significant saving in coding process.

gte910h6• 16 years ago

Having actually ported Linux to a new platform...I'd honestly say I can't see live starting from an app actually being easier than booting from a bootloader.

Now: Making it so the bootloader can be installed as an app via an open source project and compiling for the developer program, now that's a worthy goal and intermediary step.

sp332• 16 years ago

Yup, Mach was intended to replace the BSD kernel, it + some of 4.3BSD kernel = XNU, which underlies OS X and iPhone OS.

jsz02• 16 years ago

It would be very clever for Apple to support this first party someday. BootCamp for the iPhone. Seems to have worked well on the Mac side. Few people buy MacBooks to run Windows but lots of people like the idea that they could run Windows if they needed to. There's probably far less demand on the SmartPhone side for this type of feature but ultimately if Apple is making all their money off hardware it may serve them well to support side-loading of Android someday.

kgrin2• 16 years ago

Dubious, particularly if they're so hellbent (for better or for worse) on a specific user experience. Plus, all the little things - like, say, not having enough buttons to truly mimic the Android experience (which the video mentions in an offhand way and is probably less an issue for the sort of people who'd dual-boot an iPhone) would suddenly come into play if this were an actual supported mode of operation.

andyjdavis2• 16 years ago

"but ultimately if Apple is making all their money off hardware"

What on earth makes you think theyre making their money on the hardware?

kylec• 16 years ago

Because they don't make it off the software

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/26/app_store/

aresant• 16 years ago

"What on earth makes you think theyre making their money on the hardware?"

Check this graph: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-...

jallmann• 16 years ago

It's not just the hardware or the software. Apple is selling a fully integrated experience.

krschultz2• 16 years ago

I'm sure as long as Steve Jobs runs Apple, that will never happen.

jamesbressi2• 16 years ago

That was the same comment everyone made before Apple's official announcement of bootcamp and windows on the Mac.

I do agree it is unlikely, but I know that Apple learned that it was the choice and ability that was the big sell and people continue(d) to use Mac OS instead.

bobbyi• 16 years ago

One of the reason there are so many iphone apps is that the people developing the apps themselves own iphones. If everyone making iphone apps can port their apps to android and test them on the phone they already have, then there will be more android ports of iphone apps, which means less value in the iphone platform. That's why Apple will not encourage this.

krschultz2• 16 years ago

The actual hacker's website is: http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/

He mentions at the end of the video he is looking for more contributors and if you want he has a paypal for donations. I don't have an iPhone but I threw a few bucks his way because I'm sure this took more than a bit of effort. Hopefully Google will put some resources behind this because it is really cool

Pahalial• 16 years ago

While this is indeed really cool, I don't think there's any way Google can even semi-officially back this. Thanks for mentioning the donation link though, this guy's earned it.

notauser• 16 years ago

Why not? It's your hardware and you can do what you want with it.

Apple have never complained about people installing Linux on MacBooks. In fact back in the G4 days they turned a blind eye to Mac on Linux which let you virtualize OS X on top of Linux (at about 95% of full speed!)

Link: http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/

jorgem• 16 years ago

The other way around would be pretty cool: Run iPhone OS on some clone hardware.

gurtwo• 16 years ago

How technically feasible is it to get iPhone OS running on Android HW? I just purchased my Google Phone yesterday. I would think twice now.

olalonde4• 16 years ago

I have no idea but probably an order of magnitude harder since it's not open source.

ck2• 16 years ago

He's filming an iphone with an iphone O_o

Countdown to flash running on the iphone in 3, 2, 1 days...

elblanco• 16 years ago

That's some kind of special awesome.

Really surprised at how fast it seems.

Reminds me efforts to emulate all manner of systems on minimal hardware, or run emulators inside of emulators.

logic• 16 years ago

The speed of it was my first comment as well. It's even more impressive, if you consider that this is running a debug build of Android on an iPhone 2g; not exactly a recipe for performance.

I tossed a donation his way; hopefully we'll see a port to 3G hardware shortly, at which point I'll probably jump ship quickly. As long as the phone itself and SMS works, I can deal with little bugs and quirks while it stabilizes.

Sorry Steve, I'm just not that into you anymore. But, you do make nice hardware. :)

jasonlotito• 16 years ago

"But, you do make nice hardware. :)"

The sad thing is, I've come to realize more and more that they don't even make the hardware. They just package it well.

Don't get me wrong, that's a big portion of the appeal. But at the end of the day, Apple has simple become effective at putting together other people's hardware into a pretty container.

Note: I'm ignoring the software end of this, which I realize is a big factor for many people as well. I'm merely focusing on the hardware end.

vishaldpatel• 16 years ago

Hahaha.. Adobe should pick this up and run with it as a joke. Flash on the iPhone here we come.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Kind of like Sprint's "iPhone 4G".

rscott• 16 years ago

This is incredible. I've been hoping for over a year that this would occur. Why would Google not pick this guy up... clearly he knows his way around Linux and Android.

ericd• 16 years ago

Not everyone wants to work for the big G...

jamesbressi2• 16 years ago

Bonus points that this is on an iPhone 2G!

Maybe my iPhone 2G is still relevant...

r11t• 16 years ago

Link to the announcement on the developer's blog: http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2010/04/ive-been-working-o...

jjs5• 16 years ago

I'm excited about the prospect of seeing this on the iPad...

ewanmcteagle• 16 years ago

Makes me happy to hear. The news is fresh but already you're thinking higher, faster, different and more.

jjs5• 16 years ago

You should've seen what was going through my head while watching the original iPhone keynote speech...

This was before we knew that the iPhone wasn't planned to ship with a native API (or that the eventual API and the phone itself would be so crippled), but for a brief, shining moment, I saw a world where everyone had a real computer in their pockets, always connected.

I really ought to go through my notes and implement some of those exuberant ideas for Android.

(To my delight, at least one of them has already been made: Google Sky Map. It's also smarter, as it uses GPS to determine where you are; my idea was to use the camera and image processing to recognize constellations).

DarrenMills• 16 years ago

Now, either me, or someone else, is going to have to do a friendly writeup on how to install this. This could soak up the better part of a few days. I need this.

neurotech1• 16 years ago

Probably take a while because the A4 processor is essentially undocumented. Although, It's a Cortex A8 Core with a SGX535 GPU core which is documented by other manufactures

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

The majority of the opcodes is identical though, you should be able to infer the rest by inspecting the code, the 'unknown' opcodes and architecture details can usually be puzzled out like that.

Reverse engineering CPUs with unknown architectures like this has definitely been done before, and the fact that it has most of the major components identical with a documented set will only make that easier, after all, the changes should be relatively minor compared to the common parts.

hexley2• 16 years ago

Why? There are Android tablets already aren't there?

nirmal• 16 years ago

Maybe jjs wants to combine Apple's industrial design with Android's open software.

tvon2• 16 years ago

I'm curious if there is any sort of EULA or click through licensing that prohibits this, or if there was any low level DRM that needed to be hacked around.

Apple has a history of trying to thwart efforts to run their software on other hardware, but I don't recall any efforts to prevent other software from running on their hardware. They area a hardware company, after all.

krainboltgreene• 16 years ago

Luckily depending on where he lives EULA/Clickthrough/Wrapper licenses are either illegal, frowned on, or "We'll add that into consideration.". If he's in the US, then it's by state. Outside of the US it's by country.

foenix• 16 years ago

His carrier is Rogers, he is likely in Canada.

He's fine.

tvon2• 16 years ago

I'm not really concerned with enforceable legality so much as what Apple's current stance is as a means of predicting any response if this project grew.

orangecat• 16 years ago

It requires jailbreaking your iPhone, which according to Apple is illegal. And they're probably right per the DMCA.

philipn• 16 years ago

The DMCA doesn't apply to phones.

joubert2• 16 years ago

It would be interesting to compare battery life between running iPhone OS and Android.

Also, does making phone calls work?

Estragon• 16 years ago

He said he was about to demonstrate making a call just before I stopped watching.

jimmyjames• 16 years ago

Well, that's one way of getting porn on the iPhone.

nuclear_eclipse• 16 years ago

I'm sure it's much easier to just open up Safari and type in the right URL...

wmeredith• 16 years ago

It is. (This has always been the silliest part of Apple's posturing-banning apps that with the ability to access adult content, even if that was not their intended purpose.)

elai3• 16 years ago

This will be useful! Now you don't need 2 devices to develop for android and iPhone.

gokhan• 16 years ago

How can you make sure if your app will work on other people's "real" android phones if you develop it on iPhone?

glhaynes3• 16 years ago

Isn't that the problem with any testing of Android apps? This is just one more different Android "subplatform".

gte910h6• 16 years ago

While I think this is cool (and I used to do linux kernel work, before moving to product development, mostly iPhone app dev these days, so you really don't get how cool this is to me), I don't see why you'd want to do this: 99% of the good stuff in the iPhone is the software, not the hardware.

lenni• 16 years ago

Very true. I have a Linux phone (Android) and I must concur that it sucks. I really regret buying it. Particularly since HTC has done an Apple on me and made it extremely difficult to install a new ROM.

buster2• 16 years ago

It's most probably not HTCs fault/decision, seeing that the Nexus One is from HTC and has no such restrictions. I think the mobile operators demand this.

gte910h6• 16 years ago

If you bought it in the last 30 days, you can return it...

IgorPartola• 16 years ago

I would consider doing this just because what I'm currently stuck with is an iPhone.

snom370• 16 years ago

True. So what we'll need to do is to run the iPhone OS virtualized under Linux. Or perhaps using an ARM emulator. :)

sachinag• 16 years ago

That's what Palm thought, and their shitty, unreliable hardware has helped to kill their company (in addition to the woefully late SDK).

olalonde4• 16 years ago

Come to think about it, I'm not sure this is actually a good thing for Android.

houseabsolute3• 16 years ago

What a dangerous claim you're making here. An unbacked assertion that it might be a bad thing. You're really going out there on a limb, aren't you?

This is neither a good thing or a bad thing for Android. Nobody real cares, so it's unlikely to get much publicity positive or negative. It's no skin off Apple's back for two reasons. First, you already paid for the device; they have your money. Second, no one in their right mind would want to use Android OS over iPhone OS anyway, especially not if they've already paid for an iPhone. It'll have no impact on Google because of the aforementioned lack of real people taking any interest.

I am going to make the firm claim that this will have no noticeable impact on anything and will probably not even merit an unprompted official comment from either Apple (I'm rescinding my claim about Google, because those Googlers are notoriously chatty and I wouldn't put it past one of them to mention it on an official blog, but probably not). I invite anyone who disagrees to put money on it. I'll be $10 to charity against the first two comers.

olalonde4• 16 years ago

I don't mean to diminish what this guy did in any way - it surely took a lot of time, skills and perseverance.

What I'm concerned about is that some people, who under normal circumstances would have bought an Android device, might buy an iPhone thinking: "Well, this is the best of both worlds, it can run Android and the iPhone OS".

This kind of thinking could do a lot of harm to the Android community: less money for Android manufacturers who support Android's development, lesser user experience on the iPhone-Android (considering it's basically a hack) might leave a bad impression to first time users, etc.

warfangle• 16 years ago

Nobody in their right mind, huh? Guess I'm crazy, because I prefer using Android over the iPhone (my iPhone is sitting sans-simcard on my desk right now).

Not only does the notification bar kick iPhone OS' notification scheme, and despite the low app volume on the market (I don't have /that/ many apps - and I didn't on the iPhone, either), I'm still lovin' my Android. It may just be the honeymoon period, though. (Got a SNES emulator running the other day - great for the commute. Disclaimer: I only have ROMs of carts that I have packed away in my closet)

orblivion• 16 years ago

>It's no skin off Apple's back for two reasons. First, you already paid for the device; they have your money.

App store.

c00p3r2• 16 years ago

The history repeats itself. Android is for ARM-based smartphones what Lunux was for intel-based commodity hardware.

Google is new Redhat, while Apple is new MS. =)

Now we're waiting for epidemic spread, fueled by new devices from several established vendors, like Motorola, Samsung, HTC, LG.

I'm personally can't wait for the Nexus Six. =)

metachor4• 16 years ago

I don't recall a time when Linux overtook Windows for desktop OS market share.

glhaynes3• 16 years ago

Yeah, if I were Google, I probably wouldn't be saying "Google is new Redhat, while Apple is new MS." to my shareholders.

c00p3r2• 16 years ago

Consider so-called Windows Server (NT, 200x) vs Linux.

jacquesm2• 16 years ago

It is a bit of a roundabout way to get flash on the iphone :)

tomlin• 16 years ago

iPhone with an open App Store. I might like that!

metachor4• 16 years ago

Except you are now running Android instead of iPhone OS. You could just as well jailbreak the iPhone and use any of the multitude of open app stores for that.

mattmaroon• 16 years ago

I'd be a lot more interested in seeing someone go the other way and get iPhone OS working on a droid.

Android – Now Ported On The iPhone

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