The iPhone as a PC: A Dream Blocked by Apple’s Cautious Approach?

Apple smartphones lack a mode that would allow them to be used in place of a PC. However, it turns out that the iPhone can be hacked to flash and independently endow the device with such a function. A Reddit user under the pseudonym TechExpert2910 demonstrated how they hacked the iPhone 17 Pro Max and flashed it with iPadOS. This is interesting at least because iOS and iPadOS technically represent almost the same thing, and Apple could well have implemented support for such a mode in the iPhone.

After connecting the flashed iPhone to a monitor, as we can see, you can get a quite desktop-like shell with support for multi-windowing. The performance of Apple smartphones has long been sufficient to perform any basic tasks even in PC replacement mode, and an analogue of DeX could potentially become another strong card for the iPhone. Despite having technical capabilities, Apple has not made any official statement about implementing such a feature, focusing instead on the seamless integration within its ecosystem of Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

The ability for such manipulation is due to a vulnerability in iOS. However, it has already been closed in iOS 26.2 beta 1. Naturally, few will hack their iPhone to get such a feature, but the possibility of this procedure confirms that there is no particular difficulty, and Apple could do something similar itself. Since then, no significant vulnerabilities have been reported, suggesting a fortified security landscape in recent updates.

Experts suggest that while the technical architecture exists for iPhones to support a desktop mode, Apple’s current strategy appears to focus more on enhancing user experience within its tightly knit ecosystem rather than expanding the iPhone’s use as a standalone PC. This conservative approach might shift if consumer demand heavily leans towards such functionalities.