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I haven't been able to find an answer for this so I figured I would ask here.

Is there an app or method I can use to create and run an Android Virtual Machine on my Android Phone?

I have a personal phone I want to put my work email on; however, my work email requires Microsoft Intune which requires that I give permission for my company to clear my phone at any time without warning. The reason they do this is in case I have company secrets on my phone and I if I become a risk they want to wipe my phone. I wanted to work around this by putting an android virtual machine on my phone. This way the company can clear my phone if they please but they will just wipe my VM not me actual personal phone.

I saw an article that VMWare was doing something like this but I couldn't find any documentation on it.

Does anyone know of a way to put a Android VM on an Android phone?

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    See: How can I run apps in an isolated environment on my smartphone?
    – Morrison Chang
    Commented Jun 23, 2018 at 5:32
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    I'd not even let that stuff into an isolated environment on my device. Either I have a separate spare device for it or, if the company insists I must run that stuff, they must provide the hardware as well. I don't like others in control of my devices.
    – Izzy
    Commented Jun 23, 2018 at 10:53
  • Duplicate: android.stackexchange.com/q/106649/218526
    – Irfan Latif
    Commented Mar 5, 2020 at 12:01
  • @IrfanLatif Different though related. That question is about making an image/backup of an android phone which is not the same as a VM.
    – Error - Syntactical Remorse
    Commented Mar 5, 2020 at 13:39
  • @Error-SyntacticalRemorse the question is about making a image/backup which is to be run on VM. The point is to run a VM on Android, whether it runs a new/stock ROM or a backup of running ROM is secondary. But the link is only for reference, I haven't voted to close as duplicate.
    – Irfan Latif
    Commented Mar 5, 2020 at 14:02

4 Answers 4

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This does not seem to possible, I have looked for it for years and found nothing. This is probably because these points:

  1. Android devices have a tiny amount of ram, which cannot be extended. With just 3 GB of RAM, you can forget to run pretty much any VM, as any normal OS needs at least 4 GB by now. A typical PC has 8 GB by now, or even 16. Virtualization is a field where extra ram is especially useful.
  2. Pretty all Android devices are based on the ARM CPU architecture. ARM CPUs are very energy efficient, but at the same time pretty weak and feeble compared to full Desktop Grade CPUs from AMD and Intel (which burn a lot more electricity). They don't perform as well doing multitasking, which makes sense: You don't use multitasking much on mobile devices.
  3. Virtual Machines are often not full emulation of another CPU, this means that you actually cannot run intel / AMD i386 code on an ARM CPU, so you would need a OS that is especially made for this, i.e. has been compiled for the ARM architecture, that cuts down the selection big time. Debian Linux prides itself on offering the distribution on many CPU architectures, but other manufacturers don't offer that. There is for example no standard full version of Windows 7 or 10 that supports ARM, and neither does Mac OS X.
  4. VMs are more of a professional area, while mobile devices are oriented towards non-professional consumers.
  5. Disk Storage is another problem: Most mobile devices have very little. A slim Linux can get by with just 4 GB, but a full fledge Linux needs around 10 GB, but a Windows needs around 20 GB just to get going. This is no issue on a laptop or desktop, where you will have 1 terabyte available (1000 GB), but an impossibility if you just have 32 GB.

All these things conspire together to make VMs on Android an impossibility

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    This answer is outdated, since there is an app that does exactly that, vmos. Also, the answer does not really address the question, which was about running an Android VM on Android, not running any random OS in a VM on Android. An Android VM does not require huge amounts of RAM, CPU power, x86 or a lot of disk storage. So, at best, point 4 applies to the question at all. And even that does not apply anymore, since there are VM apps on Anroid. Actually, there are even x86 VM apps.
    – Dakkaron
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 9:31
  • @Dakkaron VMOS is a good effort and hopefully it gets improved over time. But ATM it can only be used to show your friends that you have got two (or more) ROMs on your device. It doesn't support basic things like calls, SMS, BT. Android version is 5. It's closed-source, current version has 4 trackers and asks for 40 permissions. But even if the app is not blamed, the design is a failure in my opinion. Android puts a lot of restrictions on apps to minimize use of resources (including CPU and RAM). So an app cannot host a full OS without any drawbacks (though they are trying to play games on it)
    – Irfan Latif
    Commented Mar 6, 2020 at 21:18
  • @IrfanLatif That's probably true, but the question was "Is it possible", not "is it good". And still, the answer does not address Android VMs but talks about VMs in general. And if you consider that emulators are basically VMs, there are tons of pretty usable VMs on Android ;)
    – Dakkaron
    Commented Mar 9, 2020 at 8:19
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    @AndrewT. It is an answer, but not to this question. It answers "Can I run an x86 VM under Android?" But the question was "Can I run an Android VM under Android?" And nothing in the answer actually fits for an Android VM. 1) Android VMs don't need a lot of RAM. 2) Android VMs have no problem running on ARM. 3) Android IS especially made to run on ARM. 4) Does not matter to the question. 5) Android VMs don't need a lot of disk storage. Correct answers have been posted, so no need to spam more of the same. Just the accepted answer has nothing to do with the question.
    – Dakkaron
    Commented Mar 30, 2020 at 11:03
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    Actually, 3) proves that the answerer didn't even read the question.
    – Dakkaron
    Commented Mar 30, 2020 at 11:04
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+50

You can run Android emulator on an Android phone using VMOS, exactly what you want.

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There's a company called Hypori that already has a virtual android available for both Android and iOS. The only issue is that they only have this available for companies and not for consumer.

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Yes. Samsung phones have inbuilt shared folder called knox which is a secure android VM onside an android os.

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  • As @rahul-jain notes, Samsung & Knox make this easy with a kind of "hybrid VM" called Secure Folder™. This is a bit like a BSD jail or a Solaris container/zone as opposed to a full VM. It's pretty slick. I'm looking for a manageable and automatic way to duplicate or transfer a secure folder VM with its settings and apps from one Knox enabled android device to another. I hope that one fine day an end-user accessible solution with the ability to store the secured VM in the cloud or on a desktop computer (& even to run it from those environments) becomes available as well.
    – G. Cito
    Commented Oct 16, 2020 at 23:05

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