Hi, I just bought a Xperia Arc and I'm fairly new to the Android system. I was wondering how I could customize it, I've heard rooting the device is the way to go. Could someone please explain in simple words how to do that. Just to let you know I've heard you have to unlock the bootloader first but I don't even know what that is so I'm a rookie. Thanks.
Well first off, there's a bunch of customizing that you can do without rooting. Wallpapers and ringtones are simple things. The biggest customizing comes from changing your launcher. The launcher controls your home screens and your app drawer. The default one is good but it's a little too slow for me. I use Launcher Pro (can get it from the market), but there are loads of other launchers. The beauty of Android is that you can try them all and pick the one that works the best for you. ADW is another fav launcher of these forums. Just do a search in the market for "launcher" and you'll get a bunch. Some are free, some aren't.
As for rooting, you don't need to unlock your bootloader to root. In fact, if you have a branded phone (i.e. Rogers,O2,AT&T, etc) you can't unlock your bootloader....but you can root. Do a search for Gingerbreak on the forum for inductions. The reason why you want to root is to give your self a little more control over the phone and allow for heavier customization. If you have a branded phone rooting allows you to uninstall some of the unwanted software that your provider puts on the phone, also know as bloatware.
If there's certain thing you want to customize try searching this forum. There's a good chance someone has has a post on it....and it'll prevent you from getting yelled at for posting a question that someone already has.
Android is awesome and is a modder's/customizer's dream. If you want a sample of done of the different things you can do go to the themes/apps section and look for the post titled "Post your screen shots" or something like that. It's amazing how the same phone can look and operate so differently.
-Sent from my awesome Arc (LT15a)
Thanks a lot, I tried the Launcher pro on my Atrix cuz Motoblur sucked. So since my phone was originally from Rogers and i unlocked it for Fido i shouldn't try to unlock the bootloader? I was thinking someone was gonna tell me to check another thread instead of posting one, but thanks for the tips. I'll keep working on the phone.
hey I AM also a owner of arc
i want to know is rooting will be available for 2.3.3 ?
abhisheak.bansal said:
hey I AM also a owner of arc
i want to know is rooting will be available for 2.3.3 ?
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yes but unlike the 2.3.2 of the arc, bootloader needs to be unlock first.
will custom roms will ever be released for arc?
abhisheak.bansal said:
will custom roms will ever be released for arc?
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it will, many talented developers here in xda are already working on it, just have patience.
animboo said:
it will, many talented developers here in xda are already working on it, just have patience.
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GOOD TO HEAR THIS
at last dev. comes to the party(arc)
but apart from Blagus who else is working?
H-TX said:
...So since my phone was originally from Rogers and i unlocked it for Fido i shouldn't try to unlock the bootloader?
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Because it was a branded phone you can't unlock the bootloader. Sony is only allowing unbranded phones to have their bootloaders unlocked. So unless someone find a way to hack the bootloader you'll have to live with regular root...assuming someone find a way to root 2.3.3. Right now only 2.3.2 is rootable.
-Sent from my awesome Arc (LT15a)
abhisheak.bansal said:
GOOD TO HEAR THIS
at last dev. comes to the party(arc)
but apart from Blagus who else is working?
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Click to collapse
Jerpelea is on the case with CM7
thanks im_iceman
is someone working on x recovery for arc?
good to hear positive news regarding arc
Hello everyone,
I have done quite a bit of research over the past few days but I am quite overwhelmed and confused, I thought I will post my questions here as I am now a proud owner of a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact.
I ended up winning a Sony Xperia Z1 Compact from a work competition just the other day, before then I was using my iPhone 4 ever since it came out. I have never owned an Android device, I wish to root it mostly to theme the device. I have tried the Themer application in the Playstore which is fantastic in it's own right, but it doesn't let me create my own. I'm a huge Apple person and I ended up Jailbreaking all my iDevices so I wish to get some of that power out of my Android phone.
1. How harmful is it to root, unlock bootloader etc?.. I would imagine it is no different than Jailbreaking.
2. Am I able to store absolutely everything on the SD card when it comes to applications and tweaks?
3. Is it possible to remap the physical buttons to do other things?
4. I have came across Cyanogen quite a lot, is it stable and will I notice any speed issues compared to stock OS?
5. Is there a "Tweak store" of sorts to download all the extra stuff after rooting the device, similar to "Cydia" for iDevices?
I would really appreciate some assistance, I do apologize once again for being extremely new. It's just a little complicated when you hear there are so many versions of Android and rooting tools for individual devices!
Hi, I do not own the device but I've been in Sony and Android ecosystem for quiet long. So I can probably answer most of your questions.
1. Its not harmful at all! In fact since Sony devices don't get hard bricked you can't go wrong with it!
2. You can, once rooted! Ofc, you'll need mod of some kind.
3. Yup!
4. Speed issues? Probably not! But you might lose several functionalities, major one being the Camera quality. As Sony camera works as great as it is on stock only.
5. This forum is your tweak store.
KyleSforza said:
Hi, I do not own the device but I've been in Sony and Android ecosystem for quiet long. So I can probably answer most of your questions.
1. Its not harmful at all! In fact since Sony devices don't get hard bricked you can't go wrong with it!
2. You can, once rooted! Ofc, you'll need mod of some kind.
3. Yup!
4. Speed issues? Probably not! But you might lose several functionalities, major one being the Camera quality. As Sony camera works as great as it is on stock only.
5. This forum is your tweak store.
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Click to collapse
Thanks for getting back to me very quickly. I did not know Sony devices cannot get hard bricked. So you're saying whatever I do to it software wise, I cannot not physically render the phone useless?
How bad is the camera quality once you root? is it very noticeable, are people trying to improve the quality?
I will definitely have browse this forum more, is there a particular place you would suggest or should I just stay in the Z1 Compact thread?
Happy_todd said:
Thanks for getting back to me very quickly. I did not know Sony devices cannot get hard bricked. So you're saying whatever I do to it software wise, I cannot not physically render the phone useless?
How bad is the camera quality once you root? is it very noticeable, are people trying to improve the quality?
I will definitely have browse this forum more, is there a particular place you would suggest or should I just stay in the Z1 Compact thread?
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Click to collapse
I've been using Sony (ericsson) devices since forever and I can tell you you'll love it. About the brick - feel safe. Whatever goes wrong with the phone just flash the original stock FTF firmware via Flashtool and your phone is like new. It's not necessary to switch to CyanogenMod as Sony's firmware is very smooth and fast on our devices thanks to the hardware and the lower resolution. You can just root and install one of the stock based roms in the development section. No need to unlock and you can get 4K video and 120fps slow motion video without losing picture quality
Edit: You don't lose quality when you root. Sony uses bionz image processor which requires the bootloader to be locked to work. If you unlock your BL you will have pictures with colder colors (from my observations) and more noise since Bionz is not processing the shots.
omegastarr said:
I've been using Sony (ericsson) devices since forever and I can tell you you'll love it. About the brick - feel safe. Whatever goes wrong with the phone just flash the original stock FTF firmware via Flashtool and your phone is like new. It's not necessary to switch to CyanogenMod as Sony's firmware is very smooth and fast on our devices thanks to the hardware and the lower resolution. You can just root and install one of the stock based roms in the development section. No need to unlock and you can get 4K video and 120fps slow motion video without losing picture quality
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No loss of picture quality, that's contradicting with what KyleSforza said. If something did go wrong with the device, and I flashed back to the original stock FTF firmware, will it leave traces of the root on my phone in case I had to send the handset back for warranty repair or anything?.. Also how does one obtain the original stock firmware, would that be in the development section or on Sonys website somewhere? Thanks so much!
Happy_todd said:
No loss of picture quality, that's contradicting with what KyleSforza said. If something did go wrong with the device, and I flashed back to the original stock FTF firmware, will it leave traces of the root on my phone in case I had to send the handset back for warranty repair or anything?.. Also how does one obtain the original stock firmware, would that be in the development section or on Sonys website somewhere? Thanks so much!
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Look my edited post, I have explained why picture quality gets bad. As long as you use stock based firmware on locked bootloader (BL) you will not lose quality. About the warranty - I think rooting does not drop it but unlocking the BL does. You need to read some of the threads in this section before doing anything. When you flash the FTF everything goes back to stock and you will lose the root. As long as you BL is locked and you are on stock firmware your warranty is not voided.
Edit: You can find FTFs in the development section as well
I am using CyanogenMod and it is obviously better than Sony stock ROM.. Just two issues I have faced on CyanogenMod.. Sound volume is very low and camera quality is also bad.. Except these two, everything is more stable than stock ROM..
Sent from my Xperia Z1 Compact
1. How harmful is it to root, unlock bootloader etc?.. I would imagine it is no different than Jailbreaking.
Rooting is a bit more work than jailbreaking, because no simple one-click-method esists anymore/yet/at the moment. A rooted device allows you to modify EVERYTHING there is on your device (software wise). This naturally brings some dangers, such as losing all your data, or bricking it. As the posters above already stated, it is quite hard to do lasting damage to your phone. Overclocking and removing overheat protection might, but other than software-induced hardware damage, it is nearly imposible. Keep in mid that playing with partitions might require you to open the device to repair the software.
Additionally, rooting via Bootloader unlocking* removes Sony's DRM-Keys. This mainly stops Xreality and the Bionz image processor from working. it is possible to back up those keys, and i would recomend doing that. It complicates rooting a lot, but makes it possible to go back to a 100% stock phone if you ever want to. they are located in their own partition (TA). flashing another TA partition than your own will also cause your phone to be permanently broken.
2. Am I able to store absolutely everything on the SD card when it comes to applications and tweaks?
You should be able to, yes. I am however not sure how you mean that. Some tweaks like init.d scripts need to be in the system folder, as have some of the apps. It is certainly possible to have them elsewhere, but it will require some effort. Why do you want to have everything on the external memory?
3. Is it possible to remap the physical buttons to do other things?
Yes.
4. I have came across Cyanogen quite a lot, is it stable and will I notice any speed issues compared to stock OS?
CM is stable, yes. they have "Snapshot" builds, which are lightly quality tested (boots, features work as they should in most usecases, etc) and nightlies. Nightlies are builds that are generated automatically every night by a bot (3 actually) and are also quite stable. But it can happen that there are mayor bugs (not booting, stuff crashing left, right and center...), specially at the beginning of merging a nes Android release. rolling back to the last working FW will normally fix that.
Speed is normally faster because it has less bloatware.
5. Is there a "Tweak store" of sorts to download all the extra stuff after rooting the device, similar to "Cydia" for iDevices?
No. You have t find it yourself and sideloas the *.apk. Be careful with what you install. Stuff on the forum should be fine, because other able coders quite quickly raise awareness if something's not right. For Xposed there is a dedicated repo which you can access from the module itself.
there are so many versions of Android and rooting tools for individual devices!
This is the reason why there are device specific forums. Stay here for everything device-related. There are special forums for non-device-specific stuff as apps and certain tweaks.
I hope this celaned up some questions, if you still have some: read, read, read! learn, and do not be hasty in the beginning. Or just ask me...
oh, and:
coolkoushik07 said:
I am using CyanogenMod and it is obviously better than Sony stock ROM.. Just two issues I have faced on CyanogenMod.. Sound volume is very low and camera quality is also bad.. Except these two, everything is more stable than stock ROM..
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This can in no way be generalized like that. tastes are different, and everyone should decide by themselves.
coolkoushik07 said:
I am using CyanogenMod and it is obviously better than Sony stock ROM.. Just two issues I have faced on CyanogenMod.. Sound volume is very low and camera quality is also bad.. Except these two, everything is more stable than stock ROM..
Sent from my Xperia Z1 Compact
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Click to collapse
I don't see where CM is "obviously" better, stock ROMs lack functions but a rooted stock with Xposed is pretty close to some third party ROMs. As Coirpre already said, that's a matter of personal preferences. And CM is far from being more stable than any stock ROM. E.g., last time I tried CM and all ROMs based on it completely prevented using encryption because the sensors didn't work. Tethering's also still broken iirc, among several other things judging by the corresponding thread.
Iruwen said:
I don't see where CM is "obviously" better, stock ROMs lack functions but a rooted stock with Xposed is pretty close to some third party ROMs. As Coirpre already said, that's a matter of personal preferences. And CM is far from being more stable than any stock ROM. E.g., last time I tried CM and all ROMs based on it completely prevented using encryption because the sensors didn't work. Tethering's also still broken iirc, among several other things judging by the corresponding thread.
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tethering is working in cm latest nightly.. in stock rom there is over heating prob, notification sound stuttering prob, 'while playing hd games cant charge phone' bug, is that u call a stable rom? lol.. also i am getting better battery backup on cm... u must be a light user and u can only realize these issues on heavy usage..
Sent from my Xperia Z1 Compact
omegastarr said:
If you unlock your BL you will have pictures with colder colors (from my observations) and more noise since Bionz is not processing the shots.
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That's the first I have heard of this. Has anyone else confirmed this?
Well try it and see for yourself. A very detailed post was made in one of the z1 threads and the pictures were clearly showing that. I can't remember in which thread was that because it was more than a month ago.
coolkoushik07 said:
tethering is working in cm latest nightly.. in stock rom there is over heating prob, notification sound stuttering prob, 'while playing hd games cant charge phone' bug, is that u call a stable rom? lol.. also i am getting better battery backup on cm... u must be a light user and u can only realize these issues on heavy usage..
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Your reading comprehension is lacking, I didn't say there are no issues with stock ROMs.
Iruwen said:
Your reading comprehension is lacking, I didn't say there are no issues with stock ROMs.
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read ur own text again.. ur 1st statement was, u cant see where cm is obviously better.. and u told that cm is not stable. then tell me a rom which is more stable.. ur common sense is also lacking lol..
Sent from my Xperia Z1 Compact
Iruwen said:
I don't see where CM is "obviously" better, stock ROMs lack functions but a rooted stock with Xposed is pretty close to some third party ROMs. As Coirpre already said, that's a matter of personal preferences. And CM is far from being more stable than any stock ROM. E.g., last time I tried CM and all ROMs based on it completely prevented using encryption because the sensors didn't work. Tethering's also still broken iirc, among several other things judging by the corresponding thread.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
coolkoushik07 said:
tethering is working in cm latest nightly.. in stock rom there is over heating prob, notification sound stuttering prob, 'while playing hd games cant charge phone' bug, is that u call a stable rom? lol.. also i am getting better battery backup on cm... u must be a light user and u can only realize these issues on heavy usage..
Sent from my Xperia Z1 Compact
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Go playing somewhere else, this is not the topic of this thread!
omegastarr said:
Well try it and see for yourself. A very detailed post was made in one of the z1 threads and the pictures were clearly showing that. I can't remember in which thread was that because it was more than a month ago.
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could you refind it for us? you know the title and the time, and which subforum it was. woud be much quicker than us scouring th forums
EDIT: Thanks! that really is interesting. I might have to relock the BL...
Coirpre said:
Go playing somewhere else, this is not the topic of this thread!
could you refind it for us? you know the title and the time, and which subforum it was. woud be much quicker than us scouring th forums
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what are u talking about? Did u ever read what op asked about? Don't just pass a comment, read thread before posting such a comment.. You should note that this is not a place for trolling.. And u better learn urself how to avoid being off topic..
and yes my this post (just to reply you) is off topic and u r the reason for being off topic..
Sent from my Xperia Z1 Compact
Hi,
camera aside, cm is great. It has lots of customization options and as long as you don't use your phone as MAIN camera device this is the rom for you. However, if you use this 20mpix beast then don't bother with CM. The second someone manages to port stock camera or implement camera as good as stock, cm will win most of users. Again, final decision is up to the user.
Wysłane z mojego Nexus 7 przy użyciu Tapatalka
15 minutes lost from my precious time
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=52658590&postcount=67
Hi,
i just bought a Z1 Compact and i'm not too happy with the Sofware, coming from a Razr HD with CM11 and all those customization options (especially the "LTE-Only" Option is missing from the Stock-Sony Software).
Since - if you have backed up the TA Partition - you can Relock the Bootloader, i thought i'll give CM11 on the Z1 Compact a try. The only reason i'm holding back is: The Camera. I was really blown away when i compared it to the Razr HD and even my DSLR. The Photos this thing can produce are astonishing, especially as "point-and-shoot".
Now i know that the Camera Quality is going down with a Custom Rom, but what i would love to have is the superior automatic mode. Is this even possible? Is it in Development? Because AFAIK you can install all the other camera apps...
I would love to use CM11 and have at least the functionality of the Stock Cam^^
Greetings,
David
Info
david320te said:
Hi,
i just bought a Z1 Compact and i'm not too happy with the Sofware, coming from a Razr HD with CM11 and all those customization options (especially the "LTE-Only" Option is missing from the Stock-Sony Software).
Since - if you have backed up the TA Partition - you can Relock the Bootloader, i thought i'll give CM11 on the Z1 Compact a try. The only reason i'm holding back is: The Camera. I was really blown away when i compared it to the Razr HD and even my DSLR. The Photos this thing can produce are astonishing, especially as "point-and-shoot".
Now i know that the Camera Quality is going down with a Custom Rom, but what i would love to have is the superior automatic mode. Is this even possible? Is it in Development? Because AFAIK you can install all the other camera apps...
I would love to use CM11 and have at least the functionality of the Stock Cam^^
Greetings,
David
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
unfortunately nothing for this...
u will lose xperia camera app and no success port for this yet.
:good:
Hello guys, I recently got my phone (D855) and I'd like to know a couple of stuff so I have gathered some questions that I have , so if anyone is willing to help I would be grateful. I come from a horrible experience with a Galaxy A7, good phone terrible XDA support but w.e, I know a couple of stuff but bare with me. And no hate pls .
1st)What should I know of , before rooting and installing TWRP. Like what button combinations are there . What software/Method should I use?
2nd) What risks are there? I mean I've been to situations like soft-bricking and stuff , but how do I overcome them? I mean like reflashing and troubleshooting in general.
3rd)I've used custom roms in the past, and my favourite by far was Resurrection and CM. I am willing to try new stuff but I need to know whether classic stock LG functions do exist on the Custom Roms like Double Tap to Wake/Sleep , 4k and Slow-mo recording, Knock code, LED Notifications , Quick Remote etc.
4th) If I want to go back to stock, will my warranty still be working? I am asking cause Samsung used a system that recorded any 3rd-party software changed and triggered a flag so that it shows that warranty was not viable anymore.
Thanks in advance !