Xperia X10 boot loader doesn’t support to be unlocked in a secure way
Hi,
Great to see all the comments to the blog post. I will try to answer some of the questions together with Rikard Skogberg from the Products blog.
To begin with the questions on the Xperia X10. The Xperia X10 boot loader doesn’t support to be unlocked in a secure way. However, we listened to the requests and the Xperia 2011 products have support to unlock to boot loader in a secure way.
Explaining what we mean by “secure way”; when the boot loader is unlocked the phone is wiped. This means that DRM certificates and sensitive keys are deleted along with the user data partition (containing downloaded apps and games, all user data like phonebook, sms etc – very similar to a factory reset) . This functionality is added to the Xperia 2011 products boot loader. It is not supported by the Xperia X10 and will not be supported on the Gingerbread upgrade of Xperia X10.
The boot loader is not updated in the Gingerbread upgrade due technical reasons and the risks involved. For example, if the boot loader was to be updated with the Gingerbread upgrade and the upgrade fails for some reason, it would mean that the phone is bricked. So in general we never upgrade the boot loader when we upgrade phones in the market.
Unfortunately there is no way you can know if the phone can be unlocked when purchasing the phone, it will be based on regional and customer configurations. This is one of the limitations. However if you purchase an operator customized phone it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is SIM-locked.
The only way to determine if you can unlock the boot loader for your phone is to connect your phone to the Fastboot tool in the Android™ SDK. If your phone can connect to Fastboot, the boot loader can be unlocked. It will however not be needed to update your phone to access this functionality. Depending on the original configuration of your phone, it will be either be possible or not possible to unlock the boot loader. No phone updates are required to enable this functionality.
Regards
Karl-Johan
Great to see all the comments to the blog post. I will try to answer some of the questions together with Rikard Skogberg from the Products blog.
To begin with the questions on the Xperia X10. The Xperia X10 boot loader doesn’t support to be unlocked in a secure way. However, we listened to the requests and the Xperia 2011 products have support to unlock to boot loader in a secure way.
Explaining what we mean by “secure way”; when the boot loader is unlocked the phone is wiped. This means that DRM certificates and sensitive keys are deleted along with the user data partition (containing downloaded apps and games, all user data like phonebook, sms etc – very similar to a factory reset) . This functionality is added to the Xperia 2011 products boot loader. It is not supported by the Xperia X10 and will not be supported on the Gingerbread upgrade of Xperia X10.
The boot loader is not updated in the Gingerbread upgrade due technical reasons and the risks involved. For example, if the boot loader was to be updated with the Gingerbread upgrade and the upgrade fails for some reason, it would mean that the phone is bricked. So in general we never upgrade the boot loader when we upgrade phones in the market.
Unfortunately there is no way you can know if the phone can be unlocked when purchasing the phone, it will be based on regional and customer configurations. This is one of the limitations. However if you purchase an operator customized phone it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is SIM-locked.
The only way to determine if you can unlock the boot loader for your phone is to connect your phone to the Fastboot tool in the Android™ SDK. If your phone can connect to Fastboot, the boot loader can be unlocked. It will however not be needed to update your phone to access this functionality. Depending on the original configuration of your phone, it will be either be possible or not possible to unlock the boot loader. No phone updates are required to enable this functionality.
Regards
Karl-Johan
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