As all the other manufacturers (minus a few such as LG) are headed down the locked up and signed bootloader trail, Sony Ericsson is headed in its own direction. Today their Bootloader Unlock site went live with the full instructions on how to unlock the pesky bootloader on the Xperia Arc, Xperia Play, Xperia Neo and Xperia Pro (all 2011-onwards devices). There’s over 14 steps to the process, which if you’re a dev, isn’t that many at all, and it’s fairly straightforward. Just grab your IMEI, download the Android SDK and a few other SE files and sign your life away. So yeah, your move HTC, Motorola & Samsung. Hit the source link to get your dev on.
Source: Sony Ericsson - Unlocking the boot loader.
This is a good first step. At first I thought the instructions were Windows-only because half-way down it tells your to run “fastboot.exe”. But it looks like this “fastboot” tool is in the Android source repository and is available pre-compiled for Linux. Cool.
The Xperia Neo is looking like it could be a good replacement for my Milestone… when I have enough money for one.
Good job SE
So hope Motorola does the same – the bootloader situation is the only thing stopping me from getting an Atrix with Telstra next month
Excellent!