Unlock the Bootloader on Your Sony Droid Phone

photo credit: Unlock Your Sony Cell Phone

Sony Ericsson now gives you directions on how to unlock the bootloader on their Android phones. In the past, Sony has been known to unfriendly to developers and modifiers. However, now the Sony Ericsson Developer Blog has announced that the Xperia Arc, Neo, Play, and Pro will have a feature that enables an easy bootloader unlock method. Of course along with the directions, they warn you that you could majorly screw up your phone and not be able to recover from the screw-up.

Unlock the Bootloader on Your Sony Droid Phone

Bootloader? What’s that? A bootloader is part of the Android operating system that enables users to get into recovery mode. This is required in order to load custom ROM’s on Android phones. According to Andrew Kameka, Androinica, “Motorola originally had an anti-hack policy that the company has since begun to backtrack on, and HTC, which has traditionally been hands-off with hacking community, has begun shipping some phones with locked bootloaders. Android developers eventually discover workarounds for these roadblocks, but Sony Ericsson is surprisingly reversing its course on appealing to advanced consumers.”

Sony’s blogger site gives dire warnings about unlocking the bootloader. On the Sony Ericsson Developer Blog they state, “If you unlock the boot loader and then flash a custom unsigned ROM to your phone, the custom unsigned ROM will not have gone through the thorough tests that we run for each phone and software version that we release. Because of that, the custom unsigned ROM might not work properly on your phone. Certain functions may cease to work, and the performance of the device might not be ideal. You might damage your phone permanently. In worst case, it will cause physical injuries or material damage, for example, due to the phone overheating. Therefore, you should only unlock the boot loader of your phone if you are an advanced developer with good knowledge of the technology and risks involved. We strongly recommend that standard users NOT unlock the boot loader, as it is not needed. We are proud to deliver great phone experiences through our rigorously tested and official software releases.”

The bottom line? Just don’t do it unless you are a very experienced developer. This is not something you should experiment with unless you really know what you are doing.

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