Can Win10 phones really run Android/iOS programs?

Can Windows 10 phones really run Android and iOS apps? How is it possible?

This is true. Microsoft confirmed this news at the 2015 Build conference in April. Win10 is compatible with Android and iOS applications, but this compatibility is not what everyone imagines. It cannot be achieved by direct installation, but requires porting. The following editor will specifically introduce the mechanism of Win10 phones running Android and iOS applications.

How to run Android apps?

In the mobile version of Windows 10, Microsoft will add a software layer to the system to enable AOSP, the Android open source project, to run as a subsystem, which is basically the same as the way POSIX, the portable operating system interface, runs as a subsystem on Windows. For Android developers, they can submit applications written in Java or C++ to Microsoft in APK format to run on Windows 10 phones. This project is called Project Astoria.

According to the latest news, Microsoft will convert APK to Windows APX application in some way. Some developers have successfully converted APK before. According to the developers, it seems that only by packaging the APK application in a suitable manifest file, it can be converted into an APX application that can run in Windows 10 Mobile. In this way, in the future we may be able to convert Android applications into APX programs that can be used in Win10.

How to run iOS apps?

Unlike the conversion of Android programs, Microsoft has also developed an Objective-C compiler specifically for iOS so that iOS developers can use Microsoft's compiler to recompile applications so that they can run on Windows 10 phones. This project is called Project Islandwood.

Project Islandwood is a tool provided to developers that allows them to port their existing iOS application code to Windows 10 application projects. Unlike Project Astoria, porting iOS applications requires developers to spend more effort.

For iOS, Microsoft's development tool Visual Studio directly supports Xcode and directly provides an Objective-C compilation environment for iOS applications. Developers can use Project Islandwood to directly import the code of iOS applications, and after debugging and compiling, run them in the local environment of Windows 10. In other words, this level of transplantation may not be easy to achieve user-friendly conversion.

Although Microsoft is currently working to improve this tool to make it easier for developers to use, and has opened the source code of the project to allow more developers to participate and contribute their efforts, perhaps this is the reason why this project has not received the same level of attention as Android application porting.

According to the annual report, as of the end of September last year, Microsoft Windows Store and Windows Phone Store had more than 527,000 Metro-style applications, of which about 340,000 were Windows Phone applications. In comparison, Apple and Google app stores each have about 1.3 million applications. In any case, the fact that Windows 10 phones are compatible with Android and iOS applications is a good thing for the Windows application market, which is relatively short of software resources. I believe time will tell what the future results will be.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.