Developer turned Microsoft Surface Duo into iPhone Duo
iOS and Android are so fundamentally different that they cannot run on each other’s devices. However, a developer called SmuOS reports that he installed iOS 26 on an Android smartphone, effectively turning the device into an iPhone Duo. He used Microsoft’s long-discontinued Surface Duo, another foldable model.
He shared his findings on the X platform and also sent images to the Windows Latest website, which prove the authenticity of his work. In a post showing the setup process, he jokingly wrote: “Hello from Surface DuiOS 26”.
This experiment is not an emulation. The port to the Surface Duo launches Apple’s open-source XNU kernel with a customised UEFI loader, as confirmed by Windows Latest. The setup also displays iOS 26.5.2, the model name ‘iPhone 17 Pro Max’, 5GB of storage, and ‘N/A’ for the serial number, Wi-Fi address and Bluetooth.
Admittedly, the layout of iOS 26 does not translate perfectly to the Surface Duo, despite its similar shape. Nevertheless, there is no denying that it is an interesting and, above all, successful attempt to port iOS to an Android device.
SmuOS writes that his Surface Duo is a test device. It already shows some damage to the display. Apparently, it also took several hours before the smartphone finally displayed the iOS setup screen. Both displays are said to run at 37 FPS, and touch control is not restricted either.
The developer presumably obtained the source code for Apple’s XNU kernel from GitHub. However, to adapt this code for a Qualcomm processor used in Android devices, he had to put in a fair amount of work, as iPhones use ARM-based chips. He also used UniXNU, an open-source project that allows iOS and macOS to run via UEFI on non-Apple ARM64 hardware, as explained by Windows Latest.
The whole project is a fascinating personal experiment that took a total of two months to complete. In the end, however, SmuOS was able to demonstrate a largely functional Android device that actually runs on iOS 26. Essentially, his only aim was to keep his Surface Duo going, as it has not received any software updates since September 2023.
Next, SmuOS says he wants to use the Surface Pen as an Apple Pencil and get an iOS 27 build up and running on his self-created Surface DuiOS 26.
Read our iPhone Duo review next.
