

Android – Now Ported On The iPhone - xonder
http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/04/breaking-android-iphone/
iPhone hacker and Dev-Team member Planetbeing just managed to port Google's Android Mobile OS to the iPhone.
======
krschultz
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
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
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/>

~~~
raquo
> Apple have never complained about people installing Linux on MacBooks

That's because running Linux is far more common than changing smartphone
firmware, and Apple does not make money from Mac OS X AppStore (yet?)

~~~
reitzensteinm
Apple basically breaks even on the iPhone app store, too.

~~~
gte910h
I'd like to see hard numbers about this assertion

~~~
reitzensteinm
They discussed it in their shareholder's call. But really though, is it that
surprising? 30% does not go far when you take servers/bandwidth, customer
support and credit card transaction fees into account selling mostly $0.99
products.

~~~
gte910h
Being conservative

Credit Card Processing: $0.25+2.9% Bandwidth for downloading even the largest
99 Cent apps (2GB) using amazon S3 (or a smaller version multiple times):
$0.32

So that's basically 60 cents in cost for certain apps to be downloaded in the
worst case.

Honestly, looking at that, it somewhat looks like they should wipe out the
Tier 1 price point. Then it would seem they'd break-even on every paid app
download.

~~~
diggum
except that they don't have CC transactions for EACH app you download, do
they? I believe they make a bulk charge at the end of the day so if you
download a $2.99 app and three 99 apps, they don't pay a transaction cost for
each app. They pay $.25 + 2.9% of $5.95.

~~~
gte910h
I was being conservative with worst case scenarios.

The purchase of a single 99 cent app likely costs apple money. The purchase of
a free app does as well, but usually a much smaller amount (the cost for the
download bandwidth).

1.99 is probably guaranteed profit. We work with some of the largest downloads
in the store from what we can tell, and even at amazon s3 rates, a 1.99 sale
should generate a few cents for app.

------
kgrin
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
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.

------
doron
Nice work. There is no app for that.

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

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

~~~
jjs
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).

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Care to post some of those ideas? Could be an interesting topic for
conversation. I think a lot people's thinking about smartphone apps and what's
possible has started to get a bit... constrained by what's already popular.

~~~
jjs
I've been thinking of posting an online commonplace book of ideas that I want
to see implemented but don't have the time or inclination or domain-knowledge
to implement myself.

------
elblanco
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
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
"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.

~~~
cmelbye
By "nice" I assume he means nicely designed, which is something that is
largely unique to Apple.

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

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

~~~
wmeredith
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.)

~~~
metachor
No, I think the issue was never about preventing people from accessing adult
content on their Apple phones/devices. The issue is about Apple not wanting to
sell certain adult content on their store front.

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

~~~
gurtwo
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.

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

------
jsz0
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.

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

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

~~~
aresant
"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-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-in-case-you-had-any-
doubts-about-where-apples-revenue-comes-from-2010-4)

~~~
andyjdavis
My point is that when your average Joe buys an ipod, iphone or whatever theyre
not buying a piece of hardware. They're buying the cultural cache of owning an
Apple product. They're buying the seamless user experience (which comes more
from the software by the way). They're buying the ability to show off a new
toy to their jealous friends.

They're not buying a box of transistors, a quantity of RAM, a camera etc. The
hardware is just a box used to deliver a shipment of easy to use, cool
enhancement. That's what people are buying. Not hardware.

Apple could never charge what they do if people were just buying hardware. You
buy comparable hardware for a fraction of the cost but it doesn't have the
other emotional/social stuff and that's where Apple makes their money.

------
r11t
Link to the announcement on the developer's blog:
[http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2010/04/ive-been-
working-o...](http://linuxoniphone.blogspot.com/2010/04/ive-been-working-on-
this-quietly-in.html)

------
gte910h
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
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.

~~~
buster
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.

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

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

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

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Isn't that a problem with testing apps on almost _any_ platform? How many
iPhone devs have every model of iPhone AND an iPad? What about PC software
developers? Hell even web devs really only test on what they hope is a
representative sample...

~~~
glhaynes
Indeed, but on some platforms it's worse than others.

If your app is intensive enough that it will have trouble running on a pre-3GS
device, you'll probably know it and it'll be worth buying an old device off of
eBay for testing on. At this point, there are only two significant segments of
the platform (pre-3GS, post-3GS), though there are other slight differences in
processing speed amongst the models. If you're requiring GPS or compass,
likewise you'll know to not declare that your app will run on devices that
don't have those features.

I believe the App Store review process also does some degree of testing on the
various devices that the developer claims their app will run on. I'm not at
all sure of how exhaustive it is, though - I know I've seen people say that
games were unplayable on pre-3GS phones despite officially supporting them.
This certainly seems a prime (good) case for Apple to deny acceptance to the
store and I hope they do more of it in the future.

And of course this will get more complicated as time goes on and new models
are introduced. But it seems unlikely that Apple will introduce models with,
say, varying aspect ratios, non-integer scaled resolutions, vastly different
numbers of hardware buttons, or things like hardware keyboards. Freedom and
diversity are great and it is absolutely necessary for the ecosystem to
continue to have platforms with high amounts of them, but they also come with
a price.

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

Also, does making phone calls work?

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

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

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

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

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

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jamesbressi
Bonus points that this is on an iPhone 2G!

Maybe my iPhone 2G is still relevant...

------
tvon
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
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
His carrier is Rogers, he is likely in Canada.

He's fine.

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

------
ck2
He's filming an iphone with an iphone O_o

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

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

~~~
houseabsolute
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.

~~~
olalonde
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.

~~~
houseabsolute
And what I'm saying is that it's extraordinarily unlikely that more than a
handful of people will have the reaction you worry about. Among other things
this would void the warranty, and most people like warranties on their phone.
It's also unlikely to ever get into a state where it's dual-bootable, so only
the most extreme of tinkerers will consider this a selling point.

~~~
olalonde
As unlikely as it may seem, the dual boot part seems already done according to
the video <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yO2KQHkt4A>

~~~
houseabsolute
Huh, shows what I know. Even with that, the effect you're worried about will
be too small that you should be worried about it.

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

~~~
thenduks
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 :)

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

~~~
metachor
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.

------
c00p3r
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. =)

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

~~~
c00p3r
Consider so-called Windows Server (NT, 200x) vs Linux.

~~~
metachor
Linux has had decent success on servers, but that's not really relevant to the
consumer market. I think desktops (or laptops) makes a better comparison to
mobile phones.

