Firmware upgrade for Xperia U in Linux (I)

About a year ago I received some wonderful presents from a group of friends :D. One of them was an Xperia U.

Sony Xperia U (ST25i) has a stock Android 2.3, which a year ago was already a bit old. Fortunately, Sony had already published Android 4.04 for the Xperia U, and the same day I received, I installed ICS (Android is famous for putting sweet names to its versions).

The phone worked quite well. But new Android versions came, and it was obvious Xperia U wouldn’t get an updated.

So I decided to explore the Android unofficial update scene. And I ended up installing a custom firmware. And I don’t regret it.

I have the new shiny Android KitKat 4.4. The phone works really great. Fluid. Visually more pleasant. No crapware (why do they force to install apps nobody uses?).

It still has some issues pending (at this moment, Bluetooth does not work yet), but for me it is no longer a matter of testing a Custom Firmware. It is much much better than the official Sony 4.0.4 version. Besides, the scene for the Xperia is very active and vital (yesterday I installed a 22nd November version that didn’t have wifi working, and this morning I installed another version where wifi works)

The real process is very easy, but I had some issues getting to there. Because of two things:

• I didn’t even know the most basic terminology about the process (not that I am an expert know, you know) and I couldn’t manage to get a mental picture of it.
• Most of the pages are Microsoft Windows based. I have Linux at home. Linux Mint 64bits, to get things more complicated (as we’ll see).

So in my next post I’ll try to explain the process in a sort of newbie post. HOWEVER. Word of caution. You’ll probably void the warranty and you could brick your phone. So this is not something for the faint of heart.

UPDATED: Link to the detailed post.