Hacker brings Android to the iPhone

Android has unofficially landed on the iPhone

An independent developer has demonstrated a way of installing Google's Android smartphone operating system on the Apple iPhone.

David Wang, known as 'planetbeing' in the iPhone hacking community, posted a YouTube video demonstrating a working iPhone that is able to boot and run applications within Android.

Wang has played an integral part in the development of iPhone unlocking and jail-breaking tools as a member of the iPhoneDevTeam research group.

He said that the Android operating system can be stored in the iPhone's internal memory, and runs alongside the iPhone OS as a dual-boot system.

The technique involves the use of the OpeniBoot startup tool. On restarting the iPhone, the user can choose between the normal iPhone OS or an iPhone version of the Linux kernel.

After launching Linux, Wang's hack automatically boots the handset into the Android operating system.

The developer noted that many of the drivers and specific components have not yet been implemented, classifying the software as an 'alpha' build.

Wang has made the software available for download, although he warned that some handsets have experienced problems booting up when using the OpeniBoot component.

The news of Wang's accomplishment follows Apple's announcement of the next iPhone OS build. The iPhone OS 4.0 update, set for release this summer, will bring multi-tasking to the iPhone for the first time.