Last week, Google released the first developer preview of Android 13. Continuing the Android 12 theme, Android 13 also comes with several privacy and security improvements. Thanks to the KVM hypervisor, Android 13 devices will be able to run full-blown virtual machines with near-native performance. Developer kdrag0n managed to run several Linux distros as VMs in a Pixel 6 device powered by the Android 13 developer preview.
Developer kdrag0n also revealed that Pixel 6 was able to run a Windows 11 VM. Even though graphics acceleration was not working, he revealed that the Windows VM is actually really usable. He even played Doom game (connecting to the phone’s Windows VM from his computer for keyboard input). He used Windows on ARM build for this hack.
And here’s Windows 11 as a VM on Pixel 6 https://t.co/0557SfeJtN pic.twitter.com/v7OIcWC3Ab
— kdrag0n (@kdrag0n) February 13, 2022
BigTechWire’s take:
We think Google added full virtualization support in Android 13 to improve its security features. The ability to run VMs might not be officially supported by Google, but this is a great news for enthusiasts. Check out the Twitter thread above for screenshots of Pixel 6 running Windows 11 VM.
