Project runs iOS 16.5 firmware on Android
Archived — this story has rotated out of today’s deck. It is kept here in full.
The gist
The OOSexGang group says its HackiOS project boots iOS 16.5 on a Poco X5 Pro Android phone.
No public code or independent check exists, so the demo is still unproven.
Background
OOSexGang is the group behind HackiOS, a project that claims to run Apple's iOS 16.5 on Android phone hardware using a custom UEFI (the firmware layer that starts a device) and Apple's XNU kernel. iOS normally runs only on Apple's own hardware, and getting it onto a Snapdragon-based phone means working around a protected boot chain, closed drivers and a different GPU, modem and sensors. Android has run on iPhones before, via iDroid in 2010 and Corellium's Project Sandcastle about a decade later, but Decrypt reports nobody had made it work the other way around until now. The demos spread on X in mid-October 2026, with a clip of iOS 16 on a Redmi Note 12 passing 2 million views.
How it unfolded
- Apr 2010A project called iDroid let early iPhones boot Android, the reverse-direction precedent.
- About a decade laterSecurity firm Corellium launched Project Sandcastle, putting Android 10 on iPhones with Apple's A10 chip.
- Oct 16, 2026Researcher Md Ismail Šojal posted on X that HackiOS is in a "final polishing stage" and would be free and open with no paywalls.
- Oct 18, 2026A clip of iOS 16 running on a Redmi Note 12 was posted on X and passed 2 million views.
- Oct 19, 2026Šojal posted that iOS 16.5 is running on Android phone hardware, noting Safari pulls an APK from APKMirror and fails to run it, and that a public release could come soon.
- Oct 19, 2026Decrypt reported that OOSexGang says HackiOS runs iOS 16.5 on a Poco X5 Pro using a custom UEFI and the XNU kernel; Pasqualepillitteri.it reported demos on the Poco X5 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 11 Lite 5G with no public code or installable build.
Who’s saying what
- Party
- OOSexGang says HackiOS runs iOS 16.5 on a Poco X5 Pro using a custom UEFI and the XNU kernel, and Šojal says a public release could come soon.
- Caution
- Pasqualepillitteri.it and 什麼值得買 say only demos exist, with no public code, no installable build and not a single line of code published.
- Expert
- 電腦王阿達 says the reported progress is too fast and the group admits "many bugs," while Kocpc says bringing iOS to Qualcomm's Adreno GPU remains a huge hurdle.
- Caution
- Developers cited by KuCoin say the process erases Android data and compromises security.
Still unverified
HackiOS's iOS 16.5 demo has no public source code and no independent verification, per the researcher sharing it and Pasqualepillitteri.it; 什麼值得買 says the project has published no code, and 電腦王阿達 says the progress is too fast and the group admits "many bugs."