Watch an iPhone 12 Pro boot Windows 7 quicker than some computers

Iphone 12 Pro Pacific Blue Hero
Iphone 12 Pro Pacific Blue Hero (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

  • You knew you can run Windows on an iPhone, right?
  • Apple's iPhone 12 Pro is obviously faster than iPhone 11 Pro, right?
  • Let's use Windows 7 as a benchmark to see how much faster it is.

Running Windows 7 on an iPhone is probably enough to make Jony Ive turn the air in his white room blue, but that doesn't mean it isn't cool. We've covered UTM before – the app that allows Windows to run as a virtual machine on an iOS device. But it never crossed our minds to use it as a benchmarking tool. Thankfully, it wasn't down to us.

YouTube channel "osy" has the footage we've all been waiting for, with an iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro both booting Windows 7 side-by-side. The result? See for yourself!

Booting Windows 7 with UTM (https://getutm.app) on iPhone 11 Pro (left) and iPhone 12 Pro (right).iPhone 12 Pro: 54 seconds from startup to desktop iPhone 11 Pro: 68 seconds from startup to desktopThe iPhone 12 Pro boots Windows 7 about 26% faster.

Sure, none of this really matters and surely nobody is using Windows 7 this way. But hey, you can't tell me this isn't cool, right?

Sure it is.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.