VMWare and LG are starting to show off technology that essentially lets you run two instances of Android side by side on a single phone. The companies first announced plans to develop virtualization technology for smartphones a few months ago, and now it’s on display at Mobile World Congress in Spain.
Here’s how it works. You can use your Android phone for personal use, downloading and installing apps, checking email, making calls, and customizing home screen widgets to your heart’s content. Then you tap a button to instantly switch from your personal profile to your corporate profile. From here you can access your work email account and contact manager, run applications your corporate IT staff has installed, and connect safely to a corporate network.
The demo unit LG and VMWare are showing off has the secondary operating system running from from an SD card. That way you can basically bring your personal phone to the office and have your IT department load the appropriate software on an SD card to let you use your phone for both work and personal use.
Then not only can corporate IT folks remotely lock or wipe your profile without affecting your personal data, but they can also deactivate your phone simply by removing the SD card.
You can check out a hands-on demo at Engadget or view VMWare’s promotional video after the break.
Cool idea, but I’d still need access to SD storage on my personal phone, for storing my… stuff.