Developers have found a way to install Android on an iPhone. But at the moment there are still many limitations
Would you like to use Android 10 on Apple iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus and iPod Touch? For many years, such a question wouldn’t make sense, because it was never possible to install Android on Apple hardware. But now there’s something new: Project Sandcastle.
Project Sandcastle is a project carried out by independent developers and without any support from Apple that, on the contrary, is trying hard to block it. At the moment the project is in beta and works only on the devices just mentioned and not on other iPhone models or on the Pad. But the goal of the developers is clear and it’s almost a mission: “Where sandboxes impose limits and boundaries, Sandcastle offers the opportunity to create something new outside the limits of your imagination. The Sandcastle project is about building something new on the silicon of your hardware.” It’s clear, then, that the developers want to expand to other Apple devices the possibility to use Android as well.
Project Sandcastle: what it’s for
Why would an iPhone user, who paid good money to use iOS choose, at some point, to use Android? Installing Android on an iPhone has interesting applications in everyday life, from forensic research in case of iPhones belonging to suspected criminals to the pure pleasure of having a dual boot iPhone, to the fight against e-waste.
Project Sandcastle: how it works
Of course, to install Android on an iPhone you need to jailbreak the device, that is, we must forcibly remove all protections imposed by Apple that prevent us from installing not only a new operating system, but even apps not approved by the Cupertino company. The jailbreak tool used by Project Sandcastle is the already known “checkra1n”, which works on iPhones from 5S onwards and with iOS from version 12.3 onwards. Once the iPhone’s operating system is “cracked”, Sandcastle uses a virtualization platform to run a copy of Android on the Apple device.
Jailbreaking, remember, is not allowed by Apple and you lose the warranty on your iPhone.
Project Sandcastle: limitations
Project Sandcastle’s limitations remind us of the fact that it is still a project in beta. Android on iPhone, for example, can’t use the GPU, can’t play audio, can’t use the cellular network (but Wi-Fi can) and can’t access the camera. Finally, the developers themselves warn users that the project is still neither complete nor secure and that they can use Sandcastle at their own risk.