Porting Android's Java VM to the iPhone?

Question

Does anyone know of any existing projects that aim to port Android's Java VM over to the iPhone? From what I understand, this wouldn't be too out of reach and would certainly make for some exciting developments.

Edit: I should point out that I am aware this will not happen using the official iPhone SDK. However, a jailbroken platform would remove any Apple-imposed roadblocks. I imagine most that would be interested in integrating Android into the iPhone would also be the demographic that would typically have a jailbroken iphone.

Answer 1

To be useful you'd also have to port the connection to Google's App Store. Yeah, Apple's gonna allow that. We're much more likely to see some iPhone-emulation tools for the Android.

Answer 2

Based on this article, that doesn't seem likely as the iPhone SDK agreement wouldn't allow a program that downloads/runs other programs.

Answer 3

As of now, there are no existing projects aiming to port Dalvik (the Android VM, which is not really a Java VM since it doesn't execute Java bytecode) to the iPhone. There is, however, at least one "real" Java VM available for the iPhone. You can find it in Cydia on jailbroken phones.

The issue with these projects is that Apple doesn't allow third-party apps to execute code, so Java VMs can only run on jailbroken iPhones.

Answer 4

Apple's iPhone is a closed system. They control what is deployed from the OS to the applications. They have said they have no intention of supporting a JVM. This would have to be a rogue application outside of that control and therefore not very appealing to the masses.

Answer 5

There isn't currently an effort to port Dalvik to iPhone because Google hasn't released the source yet. As soon as the source is released (assuming all of it will be) I would think this will happen. It's also likely to be seen on other homebrew platforms such as PSP, Pandora, openmoko, etc.