My experience with the XZ1 Compact

This should not be here working, but it is after some hoops and sheer luck.

Carrier origin (bootloader locked), band incompatible

It's finally working now, months later, after some work and a lot of information digging.

I didn't document these initial periods with images as much as I did the later period (one day) so it's mostly just walls of text/lots of images at the end (sorry bout that)

Pre-Xperia

12/08/2021 - 12/19/2021

My current phone, a Moto G 2015/g3 started to bootloop; It randomly crashed and restarted at some point. While this phone bootlooping after some random time was nothing new with my history with this phone, the damage report seems to be bigger than anticpated.

When wiping everything and installing an android version that was lower than 10, I would get the issue where every app would keep stopping on the setup screen; eventually crashing and rebooting again into a bootloop. On Android 10, I would be able to get past the setup, but the storage would be inaccessible; simply bringing up a giant hourglass with the a line something along the lines of "this storage is not available right now."

I attribute these issues to a flash memory failure, though I've no way to confirm this.

Since I'm relatively minimalist on my phones, the only thing I really lost was my Tachiyomi database and my Wikipedia reading list. While it was a blow, it wasn't really as bad as, well literally anyone else.

I did have a 3-4 month old backup which contained their databases, but I'll never know what Manga I was reading/wikipedia entries added between then and have lost.

Normally I would put more effort into troubleshooting it, but

• Given the issue I concluded on, it seemed like something I would not be able to recover
• I've had the phone for about 5-7 years, so I decided it would a good time to upgrade
• ^adding onto this, the phone had a bunch of mild issues that were annoying that gradually appeared over the years, like the afformentioned occasional random bootloop, a broken proximity sensor (calls would have the screen be always off, making it annoying to use), a broken speaker grill that may or may not have compromised the waterproof nature of the phone and more I can't think off the top of my head.

12/21/2021 - 12/23/2021

I started looking into alternative phones I could get.

My values (with regards to mobile phones) are as follows:

• Unlockable without much hassle, and naturally from there supports Custom ROMs (AOSP has to be loadable in a reasonable manner/Lineage preferred)
  • I hate bloat; I hate Google; stop spying on me!
• Is relatively easy to be found (self explanatory)
• Supports my carrier (getting a phone only to have it's core function fail)
• Preferrably waterproof and durable to an extent (not that I drop my phone in water or on concrete often or at all but you know it's nice insurance)
• Not a must, but build quality, features that would be useful to me (and subsequently the features that are missing) and company ethics are also all considerations I make.

LineageOS is "A free and open-source operating system for various devices, based on the Android mobile platform." You can learn more about it here.

Funny thing is, this phone did not meet the first and third requirement initially, but I was mistaken in one way orr another. (the global ver is the same as the jp variant, right? it should just work, it's sim unlocked right?)

Initially I was drawn to SailfishOS (also known as the lincucks mobile os) since it's something that was on my mind for a while, but later discovered that they were not selling to my region. The project is (mostly) open and compilable by anyone, but if you want Android app support (plus a few other unnoteworthy features) you have to pay them to provide binaries. (since that implementation was outsourced, if I'm not mistaken) These are only for specific models as well; iirc it was the Xperia 10s and the Xperia X.

Here's their site if you want to learn more about the project: https://sailfishos.org/

In one way or another eventually I decided not to go for Sailfish, but the hardware they supported there had piqued my interested cause I thought they looked cool/nice. I also considered the XZ2 Compact and phones that came afterwards, but the design language had changed and the specs werent too different, so I ended up deciding on the XZ1 Compact. Naturally, at a certain point there are also phones are relevant enough to the year where the price starts increasing with each generation.

The discovery went a little something like this: Xperia X > Xperia X Compact (oh cool, there's a compact version) (has a community built sailfish, no android support though) > Xperia XZ1 Compact (nah dont really care bout sailfish, android/lineage is fine) (this phone is just a generation above the X with a chunk of qol improvements, like waterproofing and some nice design changes)

At some point around this time I also purchased a Moto G play, a budget phone which was on sale locally as an absolute last backup incase I could get nothing working.

I also considered some really funny and neat flipphones that ran android, (look into Garakei) which are almost exclusively made for the JP market nowadays, but I could not find listings for them (for the time being) and it was almost a guarantee there would be no way for me to load AOSP or some variant onto it.

With regards to regional variants

It seems that there's a global and japanese carrier edition. The global version is about double the price; ($300/400 vs $150) so I ended up going with the japanese carrier version. COOL JAPAN, right?

I looked into it and the reason for this is that Sony doesn't seem to have much market presence outside of Japan (their market share is less than 1%!). They're more prevelant in chinkland (about 10%), but the Apple has essentially taken over market, so it still isn't alot.

Don't remember what video I got this from, but here's the market share from April to September in 2021 in chinkland;

Learning about this, it becomes pretty clear why the Global version is so much more expensive; it's impossible to find!

12/23/2021- 12/25/2021

Initially I was going to purchase a used SIM unlocked XZ1 compact on Ebay, from a Japanese seller. Nips are usually pretty critical when it comes to quality of items; they tend to overexaggerate with flaws and what not. The phone I ordered mentioned that there was a screen defect right in the center, but honestly, unless you're looking for it you don't even notice it. I can't even see it when the phone is on.

For a realtime example of this, look at Mandarakes prices on items. Found it isn't uncommon for items there to be sold as little as... a dollar?! for something as small as "price tag ripped" or something along those lines. (I don't recommend ordering from Mandarake though since their shipping became fist-up-the-ass expensive after fauciverse (I looked into making an order for 5 items totaling maybe about 15 dollars, only to find out that the shipping was 200; needless to say, I cancelled)(dhl moment) , but if you visit or are in Japan sometime, consider ordering from them assuming you have the time to wait for them to deliver; it'll only come out to about 5 bucks or 10 then, even if you order from Sahra, which is known for having stupidly high shipping prices despite being a warehouse)

If I remember correctly, I got a snide comment related to used phones that I'll intentionally leave vague, which led me to search for alternative colors, ending me up on Aliexpress. Not my finest moment, but I impulse purchased the refurbrished SIM unlocked Aliexpress phone under the logic I could just return it if I had issues, while knowing in the back of my head the Aliexpress phone would almost most likely be fake. I also had ordered the Ebay one with that thought.

I place the orders on the Christmas Eve.

A day after the orders, on Christmas, I realize the fault of my impulse buy and contact the sellers to see if I could cancel and get refund, to no avail; they have 3 days to respond, but both decided to ship before responding 3 days later.

Nothing I can do; I wait through the 3-4 week long shipping estimate.

12/26/2021

I learn about how unlocking the bootloader on these carrier phones is impossible. However, I did stumble on a post that promised bootloader unlocks as an unintentional side effect of a SIM unlocking tool; I kept it in mind with a grain of salt as it required monetary payment to work.

01/04/22

The Ebay phone arrives relatively surprisingly quickly, about 10 days. It even came with a case and multiple screen protectors, probably just as a nice little bonus provided. I streamed the exploration of this phone on Youtube.

01/05/22

I only now discover through actually inserting it that my current SIM or rather the bands my carrier uses (did not learn this until later) would not work with this phone and contacted the seller about it; he straight up gave me a full refund while telling me I could keep the phone.

I regret this a lot, since the phone does now work after changing my carrier; basically got if for free.

01/16/22

The Aliexpress phone arrives after 3 weeks or so, as promised. Just by touching the phone I could almost instantly tell it was a bootleg; the screen was a much more blueish light and I could scratch off the logo on the back (lol). I wanted to refund this phone after i found it to be bootleg and also not work with my SIM (bands issue saber-eating-burger.gif) but after finding out that shipping would take a multiple months and cost about half of what I spent to purchase it, I decided to just take the L and keep it.

I actually didnt go over my budget since I had a full phone refunded for free, but it irks me the money went to ching chong instead of the person who actually gave me a fully genuine phone.

If anything looking back on it, at least I have spare parts (a whole phones worth) incase any part of this phone fails.

01/17/22 - 01/20/2022

By now I'd gave up on the Xperia; I was not comfortable using it (googleware) and I could not use it (carrier bands were incompatible), it was a glorified iPod for now. I had actually gotten very comfortable with not having a phone by now (god bless), but due to external pressures I decided that I should still have one. I dislike spending money, so I searched around and asked my family if they had any old phones they weren't using that I could use. Fortunately, by the 20th I was able to secure a Nexus 4 from a relative. This phone was fit most of the criteria I was looking for in a phone. I refunded the backup moto a little while later.

Nexus 4

01/21/22 - 01/23/22

Since it was a Nexus, it's relatively easy to unlock the bootloader; Just switching the phone to fastboot mode and running fastboot oem unlock is enough.

I set up a development environment using Ubuntu (ew, but the instructions I were following from the Lineage wiki were written for it) on a spare bare metal machine I had with the intent to compile Lineage. I ran into a few issues like running out of space and ram which had simple fixes (increase partition size, actually add a swap parition on a 8gb ram machine) but was eventually able to compile it.

From there, I just did the basic stuff; unlock the bootloader, install TWRP (custom recovery), wipe (all content from the device), install Lineage (from the image I just compiled), and configured and installed things from there.

This device has been used as a phone + some extra items; ever since I got my hands on a tablet, I've been using that for mobile media consumption (which only consists of NewPipe (youtube client), Twidere (twitter client), IM (just Element (Matrix client)), and Jellyfin (..."NAS" client? A media interface for a NAS I had.)) I found this a good opprotunity to clearly distinguish the two and as a result this Nexus only contains the bare essentials.

This consists of:

• Bromite
• Calculator
• Camera
• Notes
• Offline maps
• Weather (i have actually not used this app at all; just look outside lol)
• Dictionary
• Recorder
• Unit Converter

This is not too different from my old phone, which was just this with a few modifications (IceCat instead of Bromite) plus the media consumption apps. There are also some other non immediate """BTS""" apps like OpenLauncher , MuPDF Reader and a lot more I won't mention for sake of keeping this list frillless.

No GApps (google apps), never GApps.

I named this phone Makoto since it's code name was mako; for reference the tablet is named Nonowa and I intend to name the Xperia Haruka. There's actually an Xperia with the codename Amami that would have been perfect for this, but unfortunately that is not this phone

Enough about the past; what did I actually do to this phone to get it working?

Xperia

???

At some point in time, not sure when, I educated myself more about the telecommunications and the intricacies of it as a result of this. It is said that the best way to learn something is to run into a problem naturally.

1/20/22 - 1/31/22 - DRM, Telecommunications Network

Did you know Xperia phones have DRM? What the fuck? Apparently this DRM is involved in things like the cameras function and other properitary functions on the device. When unlocking bootloader the device, the TA parition gets wiped, which houses the DRM keys; meaning if not backed up, some function of the phone is permanently lost. Since I heard some reports of camera photos becoming a single green color after the bootloader gets unlocked, I decided to back up the DRM parition on the device.

Did you know that your phone most likely has the ability to use more bands on your network, but is likely only software limited? Unlocking your bands would theoretically allow you to use your phone more globally, since different countries use different bands for their networks. Sometimes the hardware is there and it is just software locked; sometimes the hardware isn't actually there at all and unlocking the band does nothing for the phone, though imo it's better to have everything unlocked. Why do companies do this? Shut up goy, hand over the shekles. I thought that by unlocking the rest of the bands on my Xperia, I would be able to solve my network issue. With the help of a few guides12 online, I reprogrammed my phones modem to unlock more bands.

Normally, on a stock phone with no modifications, performing both of these tasks would be impossible. However, there's an security exploit that allows certain Xperia models on certain firmwares12 to gain temproot.

Using a flashing program for my device, I downgraded my phone to the firmware supported for my device (701SO_47.1.D.11.32), then achieved temproot to perform both tasks.

Initially discovering I could flash official firmwares without needing an unlock or anything special, I looked for an alternative firmware like a US variant or something along those lines to see if they'd work out of the box; unfortunately, because my phone is labeled as a Japanese variant, it wouldnt accept it.

Don't know how to embed vids in markdown, check it here;

note - kaka is an injoke

Backing up DRM was easy enough. Once I had the proper permissions thanks to temproot, I was able to simply mount the TA paritition and pull the respective file from the partition.

Reprogramming my Modem was a little more complicated; I won't get too into the meat of it, but through the instructions I obtained industry software that was used to change the configuration, letting me use more bands.

This screenshot doesn't really tell you anything, but it's the only one I took.

Unfortunately, unlocking my bands didn't solve my issue. The core band for the carrier I was on was higher than the options the software provided, so I couldn't unlock it.

I decided from here to just switch carriers; I always use the cheapest plan, and stumbled on a cheaper plan throughout this whole ordeal, which through some research online should theoretically work with my phone. If it didn't, it would still be fine since I could use it with the nexus, and save like, 5 bucks.

I'd like to think I did something beneficial for my phone though, even if both of these actions didn't have any immediate results. (DRM ended up not mattering, and bands don't matter when the plan should work regardless of what extra bands I unlocked.)

After this, I ended up reflashing the firmware back to the latest version; not sure if the Modem changes stayed but I have the DRM backup.

02/01/22 - 02/14/22

I took some time here to switch carriers, which took some time in itself. I waited 2 weeks before switching so that I could finish my current plans cycle first.

02/15/22 - 02/16/22

Earlier when I was searching for information on this phone I stumbled on a thread that promised the ability to bootloader unlock, which costed money. It was around 30 bucks, and decided to try my luck; that was about the limit of what I would spend on a situation like this. The amount of currypoos in the comments mentioning it working and having a spare bare metal machine I could easily wipe when I was finished with it also contributed to this decision. Apparently the program promises SIM unlocks, but by some act of magic, it also unintentionally provides the ability to bootloader on devices that normally wouldn't be able to.

Here's the thread if you're interested.

I bought a prepaid card on one of these days with the intent to purchase a credit.

02/17/22 - The day of truth

Just to make sure I didn't screw up, I connected to the internet for a brief second to enable the OEM unlocking option in the developer options:

After a few issues with the payment on the prepaid card in the previous days, it eventually went through and I recieved my single use token for the program today. I tried it... and it worked!

Normally that Yes would be a No.

From there, it was smooth sailing. I unlocked my bootloader through code given on the Xperia site and flashed TWRP, which is a custom recovery, then Lineage.

I JUST had the terminal open for this and was going to screenshot. Where did it go bro

I booted the phone into fastboot and ran fastboot oem unlock 0xXXXX, where XXXX was the 16 characters (or so) code I was given for my specific IMEI.

From there I ran fastboot flash recovery twrp.img with the TWRP file I had.

Ignore the verfication fails, I accidentally toggled that :^)))))))))))))

I got the Lineage image from a thread on xda. Normally I would just self build, but the age of this ROM build and the amount of patches swayed me over to it, as well as having the Sony Camera prebundled. Seems kinda out of character to just get someone elses ROM all the way here at the end, right? Well, TomatoOS in the future maybe :evil:

I found the Camera worked out fine, even without the DRM; the DRM functions seemed to still work without it. (i.e. 960fps camera)

On initial install, I found the phone was becoming a little warm; normally the phone is just cold. I remembered that there was a thread about battery drain for this specific model being caused by the NFC module being broken on this device. Following the instructions, I just removed the NFC module and respective files. Normally I don't install apps outside of FDroid/open repo, those that have a monetary incentive and/or those that rely on gsf, but since this was completely offline and would be uninstalled after an operation + no gapps anyways i thought it would be fine

look at this stupid cat

Just for fun, here's the trackers in this app:

After a wipe using Solid Explorer and a restart, the phone is cold now. I don't use NFC, so it's not a big deal and the implementation is broken anyways. If this phone survives into the far off future I could see jp people being confused on why I'm not using Felica to pay for things, since the logo is there on the back.

Conclusion

From here, the phone is basically done. After I finished that battery drain/NFC part, I just sat there jarred for about 5 minutes on what to do next, until it fully settled in that everything critical or essential to be done on this phone was, well, done.

All and all, it took about 2-3 months for this phone to be fully realized. It was a journey to get it working; but hey, nothing ever worth it ever comes easy, right? I hope this write up did the experience I went through with this phone justice. I'm gonna go enjoy my phone now

Other shit

Configuration/Customization

• I plan on self compiling an apk with the sony icons that were in the stock rom. I thought they looked nice.
• I'd also like to make minor UI mods, touching up things here and there I think would look nice with a change.
• Of course, installing every app and going through all the settings
• For the Sony Camera, I simply disabled all network access. Given it's a camera, you'd think it wouldn't but since it isn't openly available, it's a good measure regardless.

• I might make a followup post on absolutely everything I install and change on this phone; not sure though, I don't think it would be very exciting to hear me talk about how I changed it so there's a data limit or something.

Autist notes on why I like the phone

• It's fucking geometry; It's a rectangle, none of that pussy ass rounded edge shit you know what I'm saying
• Dual front facing speakers
• Sony grade outer camera; you know, the company that makes cameras
  • Have you seen the Manual mode on some of these Xperia phones?
• Super fucking wide fisheye lens inner camera; not that I'd ever take a self shot or anything, lol
• "Triluminous Display" - Screen has a wider RGB gamut than normal LCDs, it's quite beautiful
• "It just feels like quality, lawl"
• An actual compact phone - 5.08 x 2.56 x 0.37 in
• IP68 dust/water resistant
• Minimalist design (the dude typing this is a faggot) ... but I suppose this doesn't really matter if you have a screen protector and case on it
• I've always been a large proponent of DPI>Actual size, so having a 720p screen this small makes me happy
• The specs - while not being important for a phone in my hands, (only needs to be able to make/receive calls/texts) is relatively good, and I enjoy the Octa-core CPU + 4GB RAM + 64GB of storage I will never max
  • For reference, I am coming from a device with 1GB of RAM and essentially 4-6GB of storage, and that was enough for me; so this is very big for me
• Sony mobile's ethics
• The boot time is seconds; it takes 1 cycle of the Lineage loading logo for the phone to boot in

Hope you enjoyed my ted talk

reserved and flash is fat