HackiOS timeline: what happened in October 2026

In mid-October 2026, videos of "native iOS running on an Android phone" spread across X and other platforms, and the name HackiOS reached a wide audience for the first time. This post walks through the story by date and keeps confirmed facts apart from developer claims.

October 14-15: the demo videos

• The OOSexGang team posted demos on its Telegram channel, oosexgang-developers, showing iOS 16.5 booting to the home screen on Snapdragon Android phones.
• Public reports name the test phones as the Poco X5 Pro (redwood) and the Xiaomi 11 Lite 5G (renoir).
• Chinese outlets such as Sina picked it up quickly. The main question: is this a real system, or another iOS-styled skin?

According to the developers, HackiOS uses a homemade UEFI implementation plus XNU kernel adaptation so iOS boots directly on the hardware. It is not a launcher, a theme or an emulator.

October 16: international coverage

Russian tech sites The GEEK and Playground.ru covered the project. The GEEK reported that the team had earlier booted an iOS kernel on a Samsung Galaxy J1 (2016).

Media summaries of the demos mention the UI, home-screen widgets, keyboard, partial GPU acceleration, Wi-Fi, sound, vibration, camera and Safari working at varying levels.

Confirmed vs claimed

| Claim | Status | | ----------------------------------- | ---------------------- | | iOS 16.5 boots on Snapdragon phones | Demo videos only | | Public source code | None yet | | Installable build | None yet | | Independent verification | None yet | | Completely free | Per developer shimokku | | 5+ Snapdragon devices planned | Per public reports |

Open questions

1. Release date. The team says it is rewriting, fixing and polishing the code, with no date given.
2. App Store and iCloud. Both rely on Apple device attestation. There is no public evidence that non-Apple hardware can sign in.
3. Performance and battery life. The demos are too short to judge until there is a public build.

If you want to try it early

Every "HackiOS download", flash package or one-click APK online today is untrustworthy. The team says the project is completely free, so any page that asks for payment, captchas or follow tasks to unlock a file is almost certainly a scam. Do not flash unknown firmware on your daily phone.

We keep adding new coverage to the news feed and update the release status page as things change.