Sony Ericsson to Unlock Bootloader in Xperia Models
Developers and hackers, rejoice! Sony Ericsson will be unlocking the bootloader for a handful of its newer models, meaning no more painstaking custom unlocks and ROM hunts. Plus, it's all totally legit, so no more grey areas regarding hacking legalities.
The news was announced by Senior Program Architect Karl-Johan Dahlström on the Sony Ericsson Developer Blog. The bootloader option will be available sometime this spring, but it will have its limitations. For instance, it will only work on Xperia Play, Arc, Neo, and Pro models, and the handset can't have the SIM locked to a carrier. And even then, only particular releases of said handsets will work. Dahlström said the best way to find out if your phone is eligible is by connecting it to the Fastboot tool in the Android SDK.
He explained that the reason it has taken so long to free up the bootloader to developers and the restrictions have mainly been due to business agreements between partners. So in order to not put partners' noses out of joint, they picked very specific cellphones and requirements to offer the bootloader up.
