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Xperia phones with unlocked bootloaders are being refused fixes by Sony

Booted out

Xperia phones with unlocked bootloaders are being refused fixes by Sony
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It looks like anyone tinkering with the OS on his Xperia smartphone is going to be in for a bit of a shock if anything ever goes wrong with his phone on a hardware level.

Users on the XDA developers forums are reporting that Xperia S devices suffering from the yellow tint problem - a manufacturing defect where the screen of the phone displays a slight yellow discolouration when it reaches temperatures of more than 40 degrees Celsius - have had their phones returned unfixed because of an unlocked bootloader.

Sony's customer service department deems this process an "illegal unlock", and is even reportedly turning down repair requests from people who've re-locked the bootloader.

Give 'em the boot

Bear in mind, though, that the official Sony website has a section - which walks you step by step through the process of opening up your bootloader - devoted to performing this apparently illegal hack. (We reported on it here, in fact.)

That site does carry the following warning, however: "Please note that you may void the warranty of your phone and/or any warranty from your operator if you unlock the bootloader." There is a degree of ambiguity about the 'may' portion of that paragraph, mind.

If it is indeed the case that unlocking the bootloader flat out voids the warranty, then Sony needs to make that abundantly clear before it shows people how to do it.

Our advice to anyone thinking about unlocking his bootloader would be to proceed with caution, then.

Xperia Blog
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.