If you can’t beat them, convert them? That seems to be the idea behind a custom ROM that Microsoft’s working on that will turn Android phones into Windows 10 phones.
Microsoft has been very busy on the Windows 10 front, announcing that it will ship before the end of August and that it will be free even if you have a pirated copy. It’s all part of its plan to extend Windows 10 absolutely everywhere it can.
Everywhere, it turns out, extends even to Android smartphones. As part of its announcements yesterday, Microsoft noted that it’s testing Windows 10 on the Xiaomi Mi 4 smartphone. So far, so good, you might think, because there are more Windows Phone options than just Lumias, even if there are only a few. Except that the Mi 4 is an Android smartphone.
This isn’t, as Techcrunch notes, a case of dual booting the phone, but instead replacing it with a custom ROM tailored to the Mi 4 and offered specifically by Microsoft. For now, it’s a China-only initiative, but if ROM hacking history is any guide, you can probably expect hacked versions to be made available for other platforms at some point in the near future.
Microsoft Is Developing Software That Converts Android Phones To Windows 10 [Techcrunch]
Comments
7 responses to “Microsoft Wants To Turn Android Phones Into Windows 10 Phones”
So we can take our perfectly good Android phones, and give them lobotomies to run Windows…?
Well that’s appealing … not.
If people wanted Windows phones, then they’d buy Windows phones.
While this sounds awesome, I’m guessing it would be a pretty flaky experience with drivers and firmware updates.
WP8 and Android handsets now have a lot of commonality: Qualcomm chips, panels from Samsung/LG, same audio drivers, etc. Their biggest hurdle will be convincing Chinese consumers to jump on WP, which has almost no footprint in the country.
There’s already issues though with OEM’s like HTC being really lazy with firmware and driver updates. All Microsoft updates is the OS. It wont be any better without OEM support.
That was my first thought too. Having gone from a Lumia to a OnePlus One I really do miss WP8, but I don’t know that I’d be game enough to try it unless OnePlus support it directly.
I would hazard a guess this is the true reason that Microsoft are interested in Cyanogen.
The good things about Windows Phones like the 1520 are the hardware and the OS. The apps lineup SUCKS. So why would you do this? It’s a lose on every level.