Dutch developer Martin de Vos, also known as Devos50, has successfully emulated the first version of the iPhone operating system. This is reported by the 9to5mac portal.

Enthusiast explained Apple’s pick of the first version of its mobile operating system, with fewer hardware component implementations that enable emulation. To simplify the task, it chose the first-generation iPod Touch version – it would need to emulate even more components to emulate the iPhone 2G. Another reason De Vos chose iPhone OS 1.0 was that this version had far fewer security mechanisms than later versions of the operating system.

iPhone OS 1.0 is said to be successfully emulated using QEMU, an open source emulation program. The system is completely controlled by the mouse and keyboard, and most of the installed apps remain running, but sometimes the system still crashes.

According to De Vos, this is probably the first time someone has managed to emulate the iPhone operating system using open source tools. The enthusiast shared detailed instructions on his blog so that everyone can try the original iPhone OS. In the future, the developer plans to emulate the work of the second generation iPod Touch based on iPhone OS 2.1.

iPhone OS is Apple’s mobile operating system, later renamed iOS.