It can’t be said enough that the Android community has the best developers going. Of course while the OS does lend itself to be “hacked”, there’s a whole group of people out there that do all grunt work behind the scenes that make Android so customizable.
Such is the case today with a developer who goes by the name of DooMLoRD over at XDA. This developer has already obtained root on the Sony Xperia Z, a device that is only currently available in Japan and France as of this writing. The coolest thing about this is that since he doesn’t yet have the handset, DooMLoRD achieved this feat remotely via teamviewer.
The method that was used is a modified version of the one that is used for the Nexus 4. Considering that the two devices share the same 1.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro chipset, what needed to be done was to modify Nexus 4 ramdisk from CF-Auto-Root in order to get the job done.
The prerequisites are that you need an unlocked bootloader, the fastboot files, and be running the firmware version number 10.1.A.1.350. After you have made sure that everything is all set, the following steps need to be performed: (From DooMLoRD)
- Reboot into bootloader
- Flash my modded CF-Auto-Root Kernel (fastboot flash bootZ_DooMLoRD_CF-Auto-Root-ported_FW-350.img)
- Reboot from fastboot (fastboot reboot)
- The device will now start booting and u will get indication on screen saying (Device will reboot in 10 seconds)
- After CF-Auto-Root reboots device once, disconnect USB cable and do hard power off (3 vibrations) [FYI: disconnect usb cable.. u have to do hard power off “press power button and keep VOLUME UP key pressed for 15 seconds”]
- Connect device in fastboot mode and flash stock kernel (fastboot flash boot Z_DooMLoRD_insecure_FW-350.img)
- Now reboot device and the device will start booting into OS (fastboot reboot)
- You should now Download Busybox Installer from Market and install it at /system/xbin/
- That’s it! device is now completely rooted!
Bing Bang Bong! You’re all set to enter the world of ROMming with your new Xperia Z. This method has been tested on C6603 and C6602. So there you have it, thanks to DooMLoRD you can have root on your device the day you take it out of the box.
Be sure to hit up DooMLoRD’s threads over at XDA for the bootloader and for root. It doesn’t hurt to hit up his donate button either. It’s people like this that make our community the best around.