I had considered trying something like this with Hellaphone (Inferno as a replacement for Android's Java components). Because the Inferno VM is so lightweight (

I had considered trying something like this with Hellaphone (Inferno as a replacement for Android's Java components). Because the Inferno VM is so lightweight (startup took less than a second once you were out of the bootloader), you could easily run one whole VM per application. Then just make some sort of multiplexer to swap between which VM has screen access at any one time. 9P would make a rather straightforward way to provide services for applications, too.