This guy put Windows XP on an Android smartwatch

YouTube user Dave Bennett loves everything about his Android smartwatch, except for the operating system. It has too many smartwatch-relevant functions, adapts properly to the small screen size, and is frankly just too modern.

So Bennett decided to put Windows XP, an OS released 13 years ago, on his LG G Watch:

As you can see, the touchscreen works when you try to move the cursor. That’s something I frankly wasn’t expecting, and it’s quite impressive to see.

To pull off the feat, Bennett used the Bochs emulator to load “a very slimmed down version of Windows XP — we’re talking only 100MB in size.” He cut out the GUI, leaving just the windowed command line with the help of boot disk software WinBuilder.

This was necessary because loading a 1.5GB file would have taken over 12 hours from Android Debug Bridge (ADB) over Bluetooth to Android Wear. In fact, even if he bothered doing that, just booting Windows XP would have taken eons.

Given that the LG G Watch is one of the first Android Wear devices, and it’s not getting many new Android Wear features such as Wi-Fi support, this is all the more impressive. If the smartwatch is becoming obsolete, you might as well give it an obsolete operating system.

“This has no practical use whatsoever, but this is a proof-of-concept to show that, look, this is really cool,” Bennett said. “Something that once took lots of components and different parts can now easily run on your wrist.”

Kudos to you, Bennett — kudos.