Should you run Photoshop on a Lumia phone? No, but someone did anyway

Lumia 950 Photoshop
Lumia 950 Photoshop (Image credit: @imbushuo on Twitter)

What you need to know

  • Someone managed to run Photoshop on a Lumia phone.
  • The phone has been hacked to run Windows 10 on ARM.
  • Adobe recently released a beta version of Photoshop compiled for Windows 10 on ARM.

Yesterday, Adobe released a beta version of Photoshop compiled for Windows 10 on ARM. Adobe is no doubt targetting devices like the Surface Pro X and Galaxy Book S with the rollout of an ARM-friendly version of Photoshop, but someone else decided to go in another direction. Twitter user "imbushuo" managed to get the photo editing app to run on an old Lumia device.

The phone has been modified to run Windows 10 on ARM, so don't go digging through your drawers hoping to replicate the feat with your old phone. There's a passionate community that modifies Lumia devices to run Windows 10 on ARM, and this is the latest fun trick they've pulled off.

Modders and hackers have managed to do all sorts of things with older Lumia hardware, including adding Continuum support, adding a custom phone dialer app, and adding the ability for devices to detect a SIM while running Windows 10.

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Projects like this are more for fun, and Photoshop probably doesn't run that well on a modded phone from 2015, but it's nice to see people accomplish feats like this and wonder what might have been.

Sean Endicott
News Writer

Sean Endicott is a News Writer at Windows Central, where he covers Windows 11, Surface hardware, Microsoft 365, AI, apps, and the broader PC ecosystem. Since joining the site in 2017, he has written well over a thousand articles across the Microsoft landscape, covering breaking news, analysis, and feature reporting.

He writes Windows Wrap, a weekly column covering the biggest stories in Windows and the PC industry, and what they mean for the platform going forward.

Before joining Windows Central full-time, Sean worked in journalism and media production after earning a First Class degree in Broadcast Journalism from Nottingham Trent University. Outside of tech, he is an award-winning American football coach based in Nottingham, England, and was named BAFCA Youth Coach of the Year in 2024.