Samsung Patent Showcases Hybrid Smartphone Running Android And Windows Phone Simultaneously

There's probably isn't a huge crowd of smartphone shoppers fretting over the decision to go with Android or Windows Phone, but for those pondering the two platforms, Samsung may one day make the choice easy—go with both! That's the idea behind a patent application Samsung filed in South Korea, one that describes a phone running both OSes at the same time.

Samsung's approach is different than that of a dual-booting solution. What Samsung conceived is a much slicker solution in which switching between Windows Phone and Android would be similar to bouncing around different open apps like you can already do in Samsung's Multi Window feature for its Galaxy handsets.

According to the patent filing, Android and Windows Phone would occupy two separate windows. Users would be able to drag and drop files between the two OSes, and when needed, they could minimize one of the OSes similar to how apps minimize in TouchWiz.


Operating systems like Android and Windows Phone aren't dinky little programs, they're major platforms. To ensure they each run as expected, or needed, Samsung's patent calls for the ability to let users manage hardware resources such as CPU cores and RAM. For example, a user could toss more cores at Windows Phone and limit how much memory Android consumers, or vice versa.

It's a nifty concept, though one with perhaps a limited audience. One top of that, Samsung would have to execute the idea near flawlessly—assuming there's a limited market for a smartphone that can run Android and Windows Phone at the same time, it shrinks even further if one or both platforms is buggy on a hybrid device.