How to root Xperia Neo full step by step guide.

Here we shall see how to root Xperia Neo from Sony Ericsson, including unlocking the boot-loader. Before going into details on rooting your Xperia Neo, you should understand the pros and cons of doing so. While rooting unlocks a whole new world for your Android phone, it takes away your warranty from the manufacturer. With a rooted phone you can install a variety of custom ROMs available from many geeks at XDA and other communities. Above this you can enjoy many applications which need root access to function, with which you can tweak your phones performance too. Also you can get rid off those annoying apps which came with the original firmware which had uninstall option disabled.

 

Note: Please follow the instructions carefully or you risk the chance of bricking your phone. This procedure is strictly for Sony Ericsson Neo phones. Even though this procedure is a universal method for many Sony Ericsson Android phones, do not try this method on other Android phones or you risk a chance of even bricking the phone. Also we should not be held responsible in any manner if any damage is done to your phone after following this method.

Before rooting your phone, make sure you have backed up all your data ( Contacts, SMS/MMS, Call logs, System settings, Calendar events, Access point settings, etc ) to your external/sd card memory, so that in case any of those data are lost, you can get them back easily. There are a lot of backup utilities available on Android market if you don’t have one yet.

 

OK now lets move on to our main topic. I have prepared a step by step guide to root Xperia Neo from scratch. Follow these 3 steps and you will get your Xperia Neo rooted in few minutes. This will work for the updated Android 2.3.4 as well as older Android 2.3.3 and 2.3.2 versions. This method will not root your Xperia Neo with any custom ROM, it will only root your current ROM to get root access. So now lets move on to the business end and see how to root your Android.

Before we start the procedure, we need few files during the process. I have put the links to download these files, so that you dont need to run around googling for them. So download & extract them and keep ready.

• Drivers (Fastboot)
• Fastboot
• Recovery Image file
• Xperia Root

Steps to root Xperia Neo:

1) Install Drivers.

Before we root the Android phone, we need the boot-loader unlocked. To unlock boot loader, we need Fastboot and to use Fastboot you’ll need its drivers. So the first step – install Fastboot drivers. Here is how you do it.

• Turn off your phone and wait for few seconds for it to completely shut off. Now press and hold the “Menu” button while you plug the usb cable to the phone. PC will show device connected without any drivers. Show it the Fastboot drivers with us where you extracted it. You can even go thru the device manager, find the listed new device “S1 Boot Fastboot”, right click and update the driver with the extracted content of the Fastboot drivers folder which we downloaded.
• Now open the folder with the Fastboot files. Inside this window, press shift & right click anywhere on the screen, and click on ‘Open command window here’ (Note this right click menu will not show up without pressing shift key). A command prompt will pop up and type in “fastboot devices” without quotes and press enter. If your device is connected properly, it will return something like this : Connected Devices: xxxxxxx (a series of numbers). Now your device is connected properly and we can move on to next step.

2) Unlock the Boot-loaderto root Xperia Neo.

Now get the IMEI no. of your phone from your bill or under the battery or you can type in *#6# on your phone and get it. You’ll need this to register with Sony ericsson to get your unlock key. Now here are the steps to register with Sony ericsson to get your boot-loader unlock key. (Note : by this you are letting SE know that your are unlocking boot-loader and your warranty is void)

• Go to this link here.
• Scroll down to bottom of the page and click continue.
• Click on all Yes, Yes I understand.. bla bla.. and continue.
• Put in your Name, Email and IMEI no. when asked.
•  Now you will get a Key based on your IMEI no. Copy this number somewhere.

As we did earlier, make sure your phone is switched off (if you turned it ON to get the IMEI), connect it to USB cable while holding the Menu button. Then again open the folder where Fastboot files are put and Shift + right click to open up the command prompt. This time type in this piece of code:

fastboot.exe -i 0x0fce oem unlock 0xkey

(replace the key with the key you got from Sony Ericsson).
Congratulations ! your bootloader is now unlocked.

3) Root Xperia Neo

Donot pull out the USB cable or switch ON your phone as yet. Follow the steps to root Xperia Neo:

• With the phone still on Fastboot mode, type this in.
  fastboot boot recoveryNeo.img
  Hit enter after that.
• Now your phone will boot into FreeXperia’s CMW. Now navigate to ‘Mounts & Storage’. Select ‘Mount USB storage’. After USB is mounter, copy RootXperia.zip to USB storage.
• Now unmount the USB storage, press back and select ‘Install Zip from SDcard’.
• Locate our RootXperia.zip file which we copied and flash it.
• Reboot the phone after its over and your Xperia Neo is now rooted !As I said earlier, this is to root your Xperia Neo with default ROM. If you would like to try different custom ROM release from XDA geeks, then just replace the zip file with theirs.Note: Before trying any other ROMs, please read the instructions given by the developer carefully. We cannot guarantee that all of ROMs will work with this method.

HAPPY ROOTING !

This post has been written by Vinoy KR.Who blogs at Androidust and is die hard fan of Android.He is expert in Android rooting and has almost written 100 post on Android Rooting on many a website.o