Why can Windows run on any hardware easily but Android requires specific ROMs for each phone?

Question

Why can Windows run on any hardware easily but Android requires specific ROMs for each phone?

In: Technology

Answer 1

This is less about Windows and Android and more about the hardware each one runs on.

Most phones are ARM based and most Windows deployments are on x86. tl;dr of it is that the ARM architecture requires separate ROMs for each combination of hardware by design. x86, by design, allows you to make the OS more modular and swap out needed pieces more easily.

Windows running on ARM has the same problem Android has. It has to be compiled for the specific mix of hardware. Android’s core is Linux and that can run on x86 without requiring separate ROMs. There’s nothing particularly nefarious about ARM’s decision to design their architecture this way. It’s one of the mechanisms that allows ARM to, in general, be more power efficient than x86.