Microsoft's 'strategic mistake' killed the Windows 11 mobile dream, but a daring developer is running it on an iPhone 15 Pro

What you need to know

• A developer manages to run Windows 11 on the iPhone 15 Pro using Tiny11 Core and UTM SE.
• The developer cites a degraded user experience and long boot times of up to 20 minutes.
• Windows 11's UI looks cramped on the iPhone 15 Pro due to the vast difference in screen real estate, with poor resolution and aspect ratio.

The Windows Phone ship might have completely sailed into the sea, never to be seen again by the tech's enthusiasts. Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted that pulling the plug on the beloved piece of tech was a strategic mistake . To this end, it's unlikely that the tech giant will retrace its missteps and reincarnate Windows Phone from the Microsoft Graveyard .

Our hopes and dreams for the Windows Phone are only kept alive by concept designers who've shared videos of a futuristic version of the phone running Windows 12 and concept images of "Windows 11 Mobile."

You might be conversant with Tiny11 , a lightweight version of Windows 11 developed by NTDEV to run on old PCs that don't meet Windows 11's strict system requirements . NTDEV has achieved incredible feats, including running Windows 11 on just 176MB of RAM .

His recent ventures took the Windows Phone nostalgia a notch higher. We've all thought about Windows 11 running on Android, like Microsoft's Surface Duo (though it's seemingly dead, too), but Windows 11 on an iPhone is a marvel.

The developer shared screenshots of Windows 11 running on Apple's iPhone 15 Pro and indicated he'd post a video soon. NTDEV managed to get the operating system to run on the iPhone using the Tiny11 Core software. For context, Tiny11 Core is a lightweight version of Windows 11 compressed into a 2 GB ISO, taking up just 3.3 GB disk space.

NTDEV ran the software via emulation using UTM SE (Slow Edition). It's worth noting that the PC emulator shipped to the App Store early last week.

Windows 11 on the iPhone is cool, but you'll have to compromise on performance

"It is TERRIBLY slow, booting in about 20 minutes, but nonetheless, it's still Windows 11 on an iPhone 15 Pro!" lamented the developer on X. Interesting, a former software engineer at Microsoft recently highlighted the Start menu's "comically bad" performance , despite running Windows 11 on a sophisticated $1,600 PC that meets the OS's minimum system requirements.

Besides the crippled performance, it's evident that Windows 11's resolution and aspect ratio have taken a major hit based on the shared screenshots. This can be attributed to the difference in the large-screen real estate on a laptop compared to the small-screen display on a relatively small iPhone.

As our sister site, Tom's Hardware , points out, it's not all bad! Other Windows 11 elements, like text rendering, remained consistent while running on the iPhone. While the feat is impressive, waiting 20 minutes to use the operating system with a buggy performance seems like a huge compromise on the user's end.