Windows 10 is now running on a Samsung Galaxy S8 – and other Android phones

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By Darren Allan
last updated

Windows 10 for ARM is spotted on the S8 and Xiaomi Mi6

(Image credit: TechRadar)

Windows 10 for ARM has been spotted running on Samsung’s Galaxy S8 smartphone, and other handsets powered by Snapdragon 835 chips besides.

As Windows Latest reports, now that a memory leak bug in Windows 10 for ARM which affected Snapdragon 835 processors has been resolved, Microsoft’s OS can successfully be installed on phones using this chip.

And this has led to a bunch of developers getting the operating system on the Galaxy S8 as mentioned – the work of Evsio0n, who posted the results on Twitter – as well as other devs reportedly getting Microsoft’s OS going on the Xiaomi Mi6, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, and OnePlus 6.

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That said, there are serious caveats in having Windows 10 for ARM ‘running’ on these phones, meaning that it does boot up and work – which it didn’t before, thanks to the now cured memory leak – but you can’t do much of practical use with it. It’s more about what’s possible, at this point, rather than what’s useful.

A great deal of Windows is unusable on these phones currently, including touch functionality, and the camera, sensors and so forth.

Lumia success

You may recall earlier projects to get Windows 10 for ARM working on the Lumia 950 XL, for example, which offered up much more functionality – as well as full tutorials on how to pull off the process yourself. The devs working on these Snapdragon 835 phones haven’t yet shared any guides on what to do, or any details at all on how they achieved their progress thus far, but that’s not really surprising at this very early stage.

Nonetheless, it’s still interesting to see a version of Windows 10 running on a Galaxy S8, and more compelling possibilities may be in the pipeline, as Windows Latest hints – like dual-booting Windows 10 for ARM and Android.

Windows 10 for ARM runs on what Microsoft calls ‘always connected’ PCs, laptops with Snapdragon chips (offering cellular connectivity), hence the possibility to sidestep to Snapdragon-powered Android handsets.

Darren Allan

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).