Student Successfully Installs Windows 11 On His Old Windows Phone

Preview of Windows 11 has been released and can be accessed by the public since earlier this week. However, one student made a surprise. Instead of installing it on a PC or laptop, this latest Windows operating system is actually installed on older phones.

The student was named Gustave Monce. In the short video demo he shared, this engineering student shows how Windows 11 runs on a Lumia 950 XL – one of the Windows-based phones and also the last phone to run that version.

Unexpectedly, Windows 11 can adapt well to a 5.7-inch screen. However, the animation speed part feels lacking. That is, although Windows 11 can be used on the Lumia 950 XL, but in terms of performance it is considered less able to meet daily needs.

However, that was not the main point of Gustave's experiment. On The Verge, Gustave explained that this experiment began five years ago. And there have been many Windows-based phones that have been tested by Gustav.

“This started five years ago, when Windows 10 phones were getting obsolete,” Gustave explained.

Furthermore, Monce also collaborated with Bingxing Wang, a fellow technician, to create a smartphone capable of running Windows OS.

"Over time, we started to talk about it, discussion groups were formed and then we have a community that has an interest in running Windows 10 on the Lumi 950," explained Gustave.

Now, Gustave's group consists of 15 people. And every day, there is always an improvement from the vision they want to realize: to make Windows run fully on smartphones.

In implementing the Windows 11 OS on smartphones, Gustave and his team carried out a reverse engineering method on the river. Not only that, they also wrote some of their own code.

“I don't want to imply that we were quick at it. It took us four years to get to this result, and actually this result is quite impressive because there is no documentation," said Gustave.

Years of experience doing the best engineering for Windows 10 and 10X pays off. What's more, according to Gustave, Windows 11 is basically an updated version. So there is no need to add a lot of new things.

Gustave and the team also created a dedicated site for the project they were running. In it, visitors can access the tools used, guides, and program documentation to embed Windows 10 and Windows 11 on older Windows phones.

Interested in trying? You can open the site created by Gustave that the VOI team has inserted above.