Someone hacked a Windows Phone to ‘run’ iOS

Remember when there was a Windows Phone? You don’t?! How could you not? I mean, we all had such a good time laughing at it! The handsets were so memorable..there was the…um, you know, the Nokia something something…

Well, someone in this big blue marble of a world we live in remembers the Windows Phone. A user on Reddit who goes by OceanDepth95028 had a Windows phone lying around–a Nokia LumiPhone 1020–and hacked it so it runs iOS. And by hacked, we mean that the LumiPhone’s innards were removed and replaced with those from a 3rd-gen iPhone SE.

In their Reddit post, OceanDepth95028 details how the iPhone SE innards were placed inside the LumiPhone’s body. The Windows phone was modified to fit the iPhone SE’s display, front camera, rear camera, Touch ID, and SIM slot. The LumiPhone’s headphone jack hole was sealed, and the Lightning port is still accessible.

Since it is an actual iPhone SE in a LumiPhone body, the phone “runs” iOS 18.3.1, which is the latest version of iOS. OceanDepth95028 says the phone, which they’ve dubbed “LumiPhone 1020 SE,” works “how it should (except wireless charging and Apple Pay).”

We’ve seen plenty of Hackintoshes that were possible back when Apple made Intel-based Macs. Those Intel days are over and now that Apple’s devices run on its own silicon, we don’t see many hacks of Apple OSes running on other hardware. Hardware hacks like the LumiPhone 1020 SE are a kick, though–even if it means a perfectly good iPhone SE was sacrificed in the process.

Author: Roman Loyola, Senior Editor, Macworld