How To Unroot & Restore Stock Firmware On Sony Xperia Devices

Until a few years ago, Sony wasn’t doing so good with its Xperia lineup. Sony started improving the Xperia devices in 2011, and then it was Xperia Z that came out in 2013, the device brought enough spotlight on Sony and it won Sony a lot of respect, and right now, the flagship series has stopped on Xperia Z3 that came out a few days ago. Xperia’s very nice onboard specifications packed up at a very affordable price help it to become a first choice for the users.

Sony has a number of devices available under low-end, mid-range and high-end price tags, it’s quite easy to get a great Sony Xperia device in the pocket now. Since the recent past, Sony has been doing great with the Software updates for its Xperia devices and that becomes a plus point for going with Sony Xperia. Unlike other manufacturers, who forget their devices after rolling out a few updates, Sony is still updating some of its pretty old devices to the latest and greatest version of Android at the moment.

Apart from the software, Xperia devices have a great design, cool and attractive build quality, these devices usually have a great camera, there’s a number of exclusive features that these devices sport. All these are the reasons that are helping Sony to win some space in the pockets of Android users.

When to Unroot or Restore Sony Xperia?

That was a little about Sony Xperia devices, let’s get back to our purpose for being here now. Do you own any Xperia device? and you also happen to be an Android power user who loves to tweak the device to unleash its true power? Well, if that’s the case with you, you’ve probably rooted your device, flashed custom recoveries, tasted custom ROMs, a lot of mods and other tweaks.

While you experiment with your device, chances are, at times you end up soft-bricking it, or some annoying error comes up that’s hard to wipe off. And at times, you only need to unroot your device and get rid of the root access, stop the functionality of the root access on your device. To be precise, you need to get your device back in its stock condition.

The only way to revert back your device to its stock condition is to flash a stock firmware, while you have your device rooted, an OTA update or Sony PC Companion isn’t going to help you to get back to the stock condition, you will have to flash the firmware manually using Sony Flashtool. Although there’s a number of stock firmware guides posted on our site, and you may also find a complete guide on how to use Sony Flashtool, but a specific guide to flash the firmware is what we are going to cook in the succeeding post.

How To Unroot & Restore Stock Firmware On Sony Xperia Devices

Before we begin with the procedure, you may keep in mind that in case you’ve unlocked your device’s bootloader, then use this guide won’t re-lock it, nor it will revert back the warranty of your device, though it will wipe any custom recovery, custom kernel, root access or any mods you’ve flashed on your device. Users with the locked bootloaders will get the custom changes wiped off, and there device’s warranty remains unaffected. Let’s go through some pre-installation instructions and then unroot and install stock firmware on your Sony Xperia smartphone.

Early Preparations:

1. This is only for Sony Xperia Smartphones!

This ROM is only for the device mentioned above. Make sure that your model number matches the one listed above. To do so, go to Settings > About Device on your device and see your model number. Flashing this firmware on any other device will result in bricking it so make sure that you meet this requirement first of all.

2. The battery should be charged at least over 60%.

Make sure that your battery is charged enough to complete the flashing process. In case your battery is low and your device goes dead during the flashing process, you may end up soft bricking your device as it won’t complete the flashing process.

3. Backup everything!

Just to be on the safe side, you may consider backing up each and everything from your Android device. This is highly recommended so that in case anything goes wrong, you still have the access to all of your data and you can restore it immediately. You may backup everything as listed below.

• Backup SMS Messages
• Backup Call Logs
• Also, Backup Contacts
• Backup Media – Copy your files manually to your PC or Laptop.

4. Enable USB Debugging Mode on your device.

Enable USB debugging mode on your device. To do so, tap settings>developer options>USB debugging. If you can’t find developer options in settings, then tap settings > about device and tap “Build Number” for 7 times and you’ll get em’ activated under settings.

5. Install and set up Sony Flashtool.

You must have installed Sony Flashtool. Find the full guide here. After installing Sony Flashtool, open the Flashtool folder from the drive where you installed it. Now open Flashtool>Drivers>Flashtool-drivers.exe and install the Flashtool, Fastboot & your Xperia device drivers from the list. [Important]

6. Download official Sony Xperia Firmware & create FTF file.

The next step is to get the FTF file for your desired firmware, in case you’ve already obtained the FTF, you may skip this step and just in case you haven’t, follow this guide to download official Sony Xperia Firmware & create the FTF file.

7. Use OEM data cable to establish the connection.

Make sure that you use the phone’s original data cable to establish the connection between your phone and the PC. Using a different data cable might result in interrupting the firmware installation.

Unroot & Restore Stock Firmware On Sony Xperia Devices

1. Before moving forward, please make sure that you’ve read the prerequisites and ensure that you are set to go ahead.
2. Download the latest firmware and create the FTF file using the guide linked above.
3. Copy the file and paste in the Flashtool>Firmwares folder.
4. Open Flashtool.exe now.
5. Hit the small lightning button on the top left corner and select Flashmode.
6. Select the FTF firmware file that you placed in the Firmware folder.
7. From the right side, select what do you want to wipe. Data, cache and apps log, all wipes are recommended, perhaps you may select if you don’t want.
8. Click on OK, and it will start preparing the firmware for flashing. This may take a little while to load.
9. As soon as the firmware is loaded, it will prompt you to attach the phone by turning it off and keeping the back key press.
10. For Xperia devices that came after 2011, Volume Down key will do the job of back key, just turn off your phone, keep the Volume Down key pressed and plug in the data cable.
11. As soon as the phone is detected in Flashmode, the firmware will start flashing, Do not leave the Volume Down key until the process is complete.
12. As soon as you see “Flashing ended or Finished Flashing” leave the Volume Down key, plug the cable out and reboot.
13. That’s All! Congrats! You’ve installed latest official Android on your Xperia smartphone. Your smartphone is unrooted now and is it it’s official state. Enjoy!

In case you got any queries or face any problems regarding this guide, feel free to stop by the comment box below and let us know. We will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks all!