Yesterday on Reddit, user Ankh0l Uploaded a picture Windows 11 On Arm running on his personal Xiaomi Poco X3 smartphone. The smartphone retains a split partition for the original Android operating system and even has functioning UEFI.
However, the smartphone still has some major issues with Windows 11 on Arm, such as the touch screen having inverted controls on the right side and temperature ranges that are uncomfortable for the smartphone and its battery, according to reports Reaching approximately 48 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit) is being tested. There are reports that other Android smartphones have reached these temperature ranges No Booting into Windows, this might as well be a sign of the times.
However, other than those two major issues…the experience is smooth enough for some tasks! Redditor anh0l created some limited animations of Blender 3.6 LTS, successfully using the operating system via a Bluetooth mouse, and recognizing 120 Hz monitors. He even thought it should be able to play games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensivewhich runs on a newer version valveThe retired Source engine is capable of up to 30 FPS, but cannot handle the more modern Source 2-based engines Counter-Strike 2 In any playable form.
The only reason most of this seems to work is that Windows on Arm development is primarily focused on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips. Since these are also common in smartphones, phones with Snapdragon 800 series or newer CPUs appear to be well protected against this hack, but older Snapdragons are not at all. Snapdragon CPUs with similar underlying architecture exist on both Windows Arm laptops and Android devices, which is why it works, and driver support is still far from complete. The high temperatures of the Snapdragon 860 inside the Xiaomi Poco X3 running Windows 11 even led Reddit user anh0l to joke that he “wouldn’t take this to the airport.”
Despite these issues, he claims the experience “runs flawlessly” and has some livelier screenshots in the thread. Only virtualization-related features, such as VM applications or the Windows subsystem trying to install Linux, appear to be completely broken. Beyond that, web browsing and other operating system features, including even those needed to create basic Blender animations, appear to be still present, despite running at 120 Hz and battery stress of 48 degrees Celsius.