[Sony Xperia M] cabriofahrer:
Hello everyone,

I have a Sony Xperia M C1905 in my hands which was acquired through a contract with Vodafone (contract with Vodafone has been cancelled already). The phone is unusable due to endless and successive black popups like "...android.core ... stopped working", "...google... stopped working... " etc.

I have read and tried a lot before registering to this forum which I am going to explain now.

First idea I got was to simply perform a factory reset:

- Although almost impossible due to the endless popups, when I finally make it to the menu "Backup & Restore" and manage to push the restore button, the function freezes and nothing happens. After forcing a shutdown by pressing the power button and turning the power on again, the phone remains the same, tried it several times, a factory reset is impossible that way.

- Also tried the pushing down power + volume up button and pushing down power + volume down button (just to try both) but a special menu never appears, phone just either boots normal or endlessly, so that battery has to be taken out.

- Although almost impossible due to the endless popups, as already said, I also tried to enter *#*#7378423#*#* several times, but also here no special menu appears.

- I tried to unlock the bootloader or simply perform a factory reset with fastboot, obtaining an unlock code from Sony Mobile Developer.

because actually i did manage to type in *#06# to obtain the IMEI. I had to write it down fast though, due to the pop-ups and had to reboot and retry several times until I finally managed.

I use FreeBSD on my PC and I have fastboot and adb installed:

# pkg info | grep android
android-tools-adb-devel-n.p.5.3582 Android debug bridge command line tool
android-tools-fastboot-devel-n.p.5.3582 Android Fastboot protocol CLI tool
#

I connected the powered off phone while holding down the volume up button to the PC. I think the connection is fine, as you will learn from the following outputs:

$ su
Password:
# usbconfig
ugen1.1: <EHCI root HUB nVidia> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen0.1: <OHCI root HUB nVidia> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=SAVE (0mA)
ugen0.2: <RAPTOR-GAMING LM1 RAPTOR-GAMING> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=LOW (1.5Mbps) pwr=ON (100mA)
ugen1.2: <USB2.0Camera PixArt Imaging Inc.> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON (500mA)
ugen0.3: <USB Keyboard SEM> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=LOW (1.5Mbps) pwr=ON (98mA)
ugen0.4: <photosmart 7600 series hp> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=FULL (12Mbps) pwr=ON (2mA)
ugen1.3: <S1Boot Fastboot Sony Mobile Communications AB> at usbus1, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON (256mA)
# /usr/local/bin/fastboot devices
YT910LSGX1 fastboot

The above number actually coincides with the label below the battery.

So I tried to unlock the bootcode with the code/instructions send to me from the link above:

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot devices
YT910LSGX1 fastboot
# /usr/local/bin/fastboot -i 0x0fce oem unlock 0x48052BFE489999F2
...
FAILED (remote: Command not allowed)
finished. total time: 0.003s

So that does not work either. Also a factory reset with fastboot does not work:

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot devices
YT910LSGX1 fastboot
# /usr/local/bin/fastboot erase cache
erasing 'cache'...
FAILED (remote: Command not allowed)
finished. total time: 0.002s
# /usr/local/bin/fastboot erase data
erasing 'data'...
FAILED (remote: Command not allowed)
finished. total time: 0.002s

The phone is also not rooted. E.g. I cannot uninstall applications through adb either (after the "unauthorized" output I was able to push the authorization on the phone):

# /usr/local/bin/fastboot reboot
rebooting...

finished. total time: 0.002s
# adb devices
List of devices attached
* daemon not running. starting it now at tcp:5037 *
* daemon started successfully *
YT910LSGX1 unauthorized

# adb devices
List of devices attached
YT910LSGX1 device

# adb shell
shell@C1905:/ $ su
/system/bin/sh: su: not found
127|shell@C1905:/ $ mount -o remount,rw -t rfs /dev/stl5 /system
mount: Operation not permitted
255|shell@C1905:/ $ su
/system/bin/sh: su: not found

So, is there a way to save this phone?