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An exam question I had this morning:

If a telephone manufacturer would like to install both Android and iOS operating systems on a smartphone, would that be possible? If yes, what changes should he make?

I'm asking this here because I know they are both based on Unix. My answer was yes, but most of my colleagues answered no.

israell
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  • Say for example if Apple decided to port and add android to their phones and they modified their bootloader to be able to choose between the two OS:es during boot, then yes it should be possible. But you could only have one OS running – Kotte Jan 22 '15 at 07:47
  • I could have only one OS running at a time , but can I switch between them ? The same as it is on a pc with windows and linux installed. – israell Jan 22 '15 at 07:50
  • In fact, some industrious users managed to hack iPhones in such a way that they could run Android on them. To my knowledge, it never ran very well, but it _did_ run. – HalosGhost Jan 22 '15 at 12:40
  • Thank you! I thought this has something to do with the cpu .. – israell Jan 22 '15 at 16:32

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There must be a modified bootloader.

A good example is the HTC HD2, a phone that can run Windows Mobile 6.5, Android, Meego, Ubuntu, Firefox OS and Windows Phone.

It is possible because someone developed a bootloader called MAGLDR that let the user install new OSs and choose in which one start the system.

pbm
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jcbermu
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