Can't play those old 32-bit Android games on your new phone? This app can help.

One of the most disappointing changes to Android in recent years has been the decision to drop support for 32-bit apps. This won’t affect the vast majority of people, but I found it particularly unfortunate due to the wide variety of abandoned classic Android games. Fortunately, a solution has been flying under the radar for a while if you want to run classic Android games on your new phone.

I recently stumbled across the VPhoneOS app, and it’s actually been available for a couple of years now. Simply put, VPhoneOS lets you install and run 32-bit apps on your Android device. VPhoneOS supports 32-bit Android apps via a virtual machine. Free users can run a virtual machine based on Android 7, while VIP subscribers get access to Android 10 and Android 12, along with 64-bit app support.

Nevertheless, I found that the app ran several 32-bit games just fine via the free Android 7 virtual machine. These included Wayward Souls, Mikey Boots, and Bloons TD 5. I did find that a couple of apps either refused to install or took absolute ages to install. I’ve also seen some user reports suggesting that performance degrades over time, but I haven’t encountered this issue during my brief time with the app.

There are a few downsides to VPhoneOS, though. For one, you’ll need a subscription to unlock Android 10 and 12, 64-bit app support, Vulkan rendering, and multiple instances. The app also notes that you’ll need a subscription to remove ads, although I haven’t seen them just yet. Either way, I really wish the company offered a one-time purchase.

The other notable downside is that you’ll need to tinker with developer options (specifically toggling the “Disable child process restrictions” box). This isn’t ideal for typical consumers. Then there are the aforementioned installation issues with some apps. Toss in the understandable yet relatively wide net for permissions, and I can see why some users might avoid VPhoneOS. But if you’re like me and want to play classic games like Flappy Bird, Chaos Rings, Zenonia, Dead Space, or Mass Effect: Infiltrator on your new phone, this is probably the only viable solution on the market.

In fact, VPhoneOS is a much better solution than the oft-recommended Parallel Space. This app is filled to the brim with ads and seems to only let you run previously installed 32-bit apps. That’s no good if you have a new phone that doesn’t let you install 32-bit apps in the first place. We’ve also seen Xiaomi offering its own framework for 32-bit apps in China, but this isn’t available on global models. There is hope if you want an alternative to VPhoneOS, though, as a Redditor has confirmed that they’re working on a 32-bit “compatibility layer” for modern Android devices.