Give smartwatches another 10 years, and maybe they’ll play Crysis. But at least they can run Windows 95 for now.
By sideloading a DOS emulator onto Samsung’s Gear Live , YouTube user Corbin Davenport managed to get Windows 95 running on Android Wear. It doesn’t run particularly well, taking a few minutes to boot and running out of RAM when launching applications. But if you’re booting up Windows 95 on a smartwatch, chances are you’re doing it for kicks rather than some practical purpose.
We haven’t tried this particular hack ourselves, but it seems to involve using ADB on a computer to transfer apps from a smartphone to the watch. If you’re feeling brave, you can follow our instructions to install ADB, and view this YouTube video on how to sideload apps to Android Wear. Davenport uses ADosBox for the emulator, and of course you’ll need a spare copy of Windows 95 to install.
In previous videos, Davenport has also demonstrated Minecraft and Doom running on Android Wear—not that you’d want to play either with one finger on a tiny touch screen.
Why this matters: The “Can it run Doom?” test has been around for years, but stuffing full-blown Windows 95 onto a smartwatch is still an impressive display of how far personal computing has come.