Enthusiasts launched iOS 16 on Redmi smartphones

The projects were named ios-sweet and ios-topaz. According to industry publications, the work is based on the adaptation of Apple's open XNU kernel, on top of which the components of the iPhone X firmware (in particular, iOS 16.7.16) are launched. At the same time, Android is not used on the devices.

In the ios-sweet project by dipa-studio on the Redmi Note 10 Pro with the Snapdragon 732G chip, the physical buttons and touchscreen are functional. On the smartphone, you can go to settings, control point, notification center, and some built-in applications, however, the gesture to return to the main screen does not work. On the Redmi Note 12 4G with the Snapdragon 685 processor (ios-topaz project by developer MakrSas), the system only reaches the lock screen in three minutes. On this model, only four out of eight cores are active, as the rest do not support 16-kilobyte memory pages required by iOS.

On both devices, the central processor is responsible for graphics due to the lack of video drivers, which reduces the frame rate. In smartphones, cellular connectivity modules, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, sound, sensors, cameras, and GPS are also not working, and Apple ID and App Store services are disabled. The author of the ios-topaz project posted the materials on GitHub and plans to add graphics and sound drivers, transferring them from developments on running Windows on the same hardware.