[Sony Xperia P, U, Sola, Go] MrFastXX:
Hi,

Recently bought an Xperia Go and as I live in Japan and am on Softbank network the setups/customizations/ROMs are sometimes a pain to find out.

I managed to make it by gathering info from here and there, so I though to share all that in one place to possibly help someone else fighting with same issues.

I'm a long time user of HTC Desire and been going through various custom ROMs.

For Japan Softbank operator environment I have always needed to separately install a special mms.apk.

Once I found out that in Sony case the app is in fact called conversations.apk I began to uncover from several Japanese forums how to untangle Xperia.

I'm not going to list all the unnecessary steps I went through, or repeat the instructions from other posts, otherwise this post would go on forever... But I will state the main parts where I encountered problems or where you might want to pay extra attention.

I was using a fresh installed Win7 PC which I happened to have at hand - to avoid any problems of previously installed programs or drivers, so I first installed JDK and SDK...

1. First I tried the unmodded phone with Softbank access points, but as expected the MMS sending/receiving was not possible. To play around with the messaging applications, I needed to root the phone. For that I needed to first unlock the bootloader and then flash a pre-rooted kernel

1. Go came installed with .162 kernel. I let it OTA updgrade to .184

2. Unlocked bootloader http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/instructions

- Here I had some problems with the driver installation. I found out a solution from Nerre http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1678219: post #6

-Copy AdbWinUsbApi.dll and AdbWinApi.dll from platform-tools to tools (this was my own finding)

!! Due to user stupidity I had to relock my bootloader once, good instructions here from jozinek http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1799005 so I ended up installing Flashtool as well. Good tool, that.

- Then finally got it done

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\tools>fastboot.exe -i 0x0fce getvar version
version: 0.5
finished. total time: 0.000s

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\tools>fastboot.exe -i 0x0fce oem unlock 0x[my key]
...
(bootloader) Unlock phone requested
OKAY [ 0.087s]
finished. total time: 0.087s

C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\tools>

3. Next I installed a rooted kernel from driversax http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1829729 but this one had problems with mounting of the SD card (you can find various comments on the thread), so I had to find an alternative one

4. With this kernel from krachlatte http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1839865 all was a Go! pun intended

EDIT: There's a recovery for this as well now, which is fantastic!

C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>fastboot.exe -i 0x0fce flash boot Kernel6.0.B.184ro.secure.elf
sending 'boot' (4708 KB)...
(bootloader) USB download speed was 20784kB/s
OKAY [ 0.245s]
writing 'boot'...
(bootloader) Flash of partition 'boot' requested
(bootloader) S1 partID 0x00000003, block 0x0000d000-0x00014fff
(bootloader) Erase operation complete, 0 bad blocks encountered
(bootloader) Flashing...
(bootloader) Flash operation complete
OKAY [ 0.606s]
finished. total time: 0.855s

C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools>

5. Installed Superuser, BusyBox and Root Explorer from Play store

6. Minato128 had been playing around with the messaging on Xperia S http://d.hatena.ne.jp/minato128/20120417/1334659736 so I thought the process must be similar for Go, as well

They were using the mms.apk modded by Jake http://blog.yo-ki.com/post/Android-22-Froyo-Softbank-MMS.aspx but that did not work for me. Actually it never had before with Desire, either.​

7. I extracted mms.apk that I have successfully used with my Desire ROMs from Takuo http://takuo.jp/junk/Mms.apk/OLD/ - update-mms-20100908.01-sense-froyo-signed.zip and transferred it to the phone

8. Using Root Explorer I renamed system/app/conversations.apk to conversations.apk.bak and transferred Mr Takuo's mms.apk to system/app

9. Installed mms.apk using the stock app Astro, which has a nice "Install" feature

FYI the APN settings for Softbank, I'm using a black SIM from iPhone (which is why I have to modify mms.apk, to change the user agent to, for example, iPhone. Softbank has only locked phones and additionally no Sonys on their lineup so we are forced to "hack" a bit :cool:)

Name: Smile MMS
APN: smile.world
Port: 0
Username: dna1trop
Password: so2t3k3m2a
MMSC: http://mms/
MMS proxy: smilemms.softbank.ne.jp
MMS port: 8080
MCC: 440
MNC: 20
Authentication type: PAP or CHAP
APN Type: mms

Name: Smile Internet
APN: smile.world
Username: dna1trop
Password: so2t3k3m2a
MCC: 440
MNC: 20
Authentication type: PAP or CHAP

I create separate APs for MMS and Internet, most probably that's not necessary, though​

Everything works now.

Thanks "Go" to

Nerre

jozinek

driversax

krachlatte

Jake san at http://blog.yo-ki.com/

Minato128 san at http://d.hatena.ne.jp/minato128/

Kitame Takuo san at http://blog.takuo.jp/

And to Sony for being a good sport and supporting open source development!

I merely collected the info on one post.

As there is no forum section for Xperia Go I posted this here, many Go related posts seem to have ended up in this section.

Admins be so kind as to relocate this post to more appropriate location, if this is not the right place.

BR,

-Petteri