If you’ve ever wanted to run iOS apps on an Android device, six PhD students at Columbia University may be able to help.

They’ve created a piece of software called Cider which allows Android-powered devices to run both domestic and foreign binaries – meaning both Android and iOS applications – on a single handset or tablet.

To do this, Cider copies the libraries and frameworks it needs to convince an iOS app’s code that it is running on Apple’s XNU kernel instead of Android’s Linux kernel.

A demo can be seen at this link.

Being a prototype, there are still a few limitations to the current version of Cider — including the fact that the software can’t yet access a device’s built-in camera, GPS signal, cell radio, or Bluetooth. However the six students involved with the project — Jeremy Andrus, Alexander Van’t Hof, Naser AlDuaij, Christoffer Dall, Nicolas Viennot, and Jason Nieh – claim that they’re continuing to further develop the software, and hope to have a more advanced version for demonstration in the near future.

Still, when you think of Android devices which do a semi-decent impression of iPhones, you have to ask yourself: haven’t Samsung beaten these researchers to it? (Sick burn!)

Source: TheNextWeb