General Xperia 1 IV rooted - first experiences

[mufunyo]

I bought my Xperia 1 IV last week and almost considered returning it at first, because it was overheating a lot the first day. I have sort of a traumatic experience with overheating phones as I had the Z5 which was simply a bad phone with the Snapdragon 810 and insufficient cooling. After some research I read the same thing about the Xperia 1 III, with people saying that the "AI needs to learn" and it will "go away after 2 days". It still gets warm, but I did notice I was overly conscious of it, and since I had my XZ3 around with my SIM inside, I could do some comparisons. The XZ3 has a much smaller hotspot, so when it gets warm, it's only above the camera area on the back, and you don't really feel it holding in your hand. When the 1IV gets warm, the heat is spread along the top half of the back and into the sides so you're much more aware of when it gets warm. So I decided to just keep it, root it and start using it as my daily phone.

The rooting experience was problem free, just like with my XZ3. Grab the unlock code from Sony, use XperiFirm to extract boot.sin, use unSIN to convert to boot.img, do the same with vbmeta.sin, install Magisk, use it to patch boot.img, use fastboot to oem unlock and flash the patched boot.img and unpatched vbmeta.img. Done! I looked at installing a custom recovery, but TWRP doesn't support Android 12 yet, so I'll just have to be careful and not get myself into situations where I need recovery to bail me out of bootloops for now.

What works:
Magisk 25.1
Zygisk
LSPosed 1.8.3
Universal SafetyNet Fix 2.2.1
fbind v2021.12.7
MagiskHide Props Config 6.1.2 (used to hide navbar and enable bluetooth in-band ringing)
G-VisualMod 4.1 (although I removed it again because it didn't do what I wanted)
Modded GCam 8.1.101 A9 GV2a ENG (for Night Sight as the Sony camera app has no equivalent - only issue is clipped highlights turn yellow)
Fluid Navigation Gestures (navbar hide doesn't work but see above for workaround)
YouTube Vanced non-root mode (make sure to set microG to restricted battery mode)
XPrivacyLua 1.31

What doesn't work:
Immersive mode and any apps/mods that claim to enable it
AOSP Mods (crashes SystemUI constantly and most of the mods don't work)
GravityBox (S) (crashes GPS apps like google maps / waze)
MinMinGuard 2.1.1 (shows 0 ads blocked)
YouTube Vanced root mode (YouTube app is too new, can't downgrade)

Another issue I encountered is that Google Maps on my XZ3 has driving mode available, but since this is Android 12, there is a new revamped version of driving mode that is region locked to US/CA/UK/AU. You will get "Driving mode is not yet available in your region" in unsupported regions. The workaround is to sign out from Google Maps, add the Driving Mode shortcut to your home screen, and then sign in again. The shortcut will work even when signed back in.

I really resent not being able to hide the (rather big) status bar and all the OLED burn in consequences of having the status bar visible at all times. The pixel shifting of the status bar icons is also fairly extreme and it really looks ugly when the icons are crooked compared to the rest of the UI. I always had immersive mode enabled on my XZ3 and after 3.5 years of daily use I have zero burn in. If anyone has ideas or suggestions to get immersive mode re-enabled on Android 12, I'd love to hear them.
UPDATE: I managed to hide the status bar with Xposed Edge Pro! I've set up a trigger to hide the status bar when the Xperia Home launcher loses focus and to unhide it when the launcher gains focus. This way, the home screen shows the clock, battery and notifications, but during app use there is no burn in from the status bar. It's basically how I had it set up on my XZ3, although I used Immersive Manager which unfortunately no longer works on Android 11 and higher. The only downside to using Xposed Edge is that you can briefly see the home screen reflowing when the status bar appears. Curiously, you can't see the other apps reflow when the status bar disappears again, even with doubled animation speed.

The phone buzzer is also really strong, to the point where if you have it on a hard surface like a table, it makes a lot of noise vibrating. I tried Vibration Tuner but it hasn't been updated in so long that it doesn't work. Are there any modern alternatives? The haptic feedback is too strong for my liking as well.

 

[JP10101]

So what is it you used to sort the heating problems being rooted exactly? Was thinking of doing the same thing myself. Thanks for posting this btw!

 

[mufunyo]

So what is it you used to sort the heating problems being rooted exactly?

Just wait for the "AI" scheduler/governor to learn to throttle the device. It takes a few days but the heat is acceptable afterwards. It will never be as cool as a phone without heat issues (like the XZ3 or 1 II) but it doesn't impair daily app usage and the only overheating incident I've encountered the last few days was sitting outside in 30 degree heat leaving the phone in the direct sun, and I was impressed how quickly it recovered from that.

For me personally, the awesome camera and 120hz display ultimately won out over returning the phone. In an ideal world, Sony would have used the Snapdragon 8+ gen 1 which doesn't have thermal issues, and you could hope for a mid-generation refresh of the 1 IV with the 8+, but that probably won't happen. Like the reviews say, the phone does get warm and it throttles to keep the heat manageable, but once Adaptive Battery has had a few days to learn your usage pattern, it's probably not going to be so bad as to cause problems.

 

[JP10101]

When you rooted, did it stop you from using the camera software that came with the phone by any chance?

 

[mufunyo]

No, the camera works 100% the same as before.

 

[JP10101]

No, the camera works 100% the same as before.

That is great to know, thank you!

 

[hahimot483]

Is Viper4Android working? I think I installed AML, JamesDSP, and V4A to get it working on the 1 III.

 

[aussiebum]

Grab the unlock code from Sony

How'd you get the unlock code from Sony?

I went to their developer portal (https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/get-started/unlock-bootloader/) but the Device dropdown to get the unlock code doesn't have the Xperia 1 IV in the list?

 

[mufunyo]

Is Viper4Android working? I think I installed AML, JamesDSP, and V4A to get it working on the 1 III.

I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in Viper4Android myself and its installation looks a bit too involved to try out simply to be able to say if it works or not. I also don't have a custom recovery yet so I'm a bit wary about boot loops still.

I went to their developer portal (https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/get-started/unlock-bootloader/) but the Device dropdown to get the unlock code doesn't have the Xperia 1 IV in the list?

Just select the Xperia 1 III from the list. The code will still work.

 

[hary232]

Thank you for letting us know!
I was wondering if you are going to try underclock the device to see how it reacts with the thermals?

 

[mufunyo]

I was wondering if you are going to try underclock the device to see how it reacts with the thermals?

If and when there's enough developer interest in this device to develop a custom kernel or magisk overlay to tweak the thermals, I might try that. For now I'm satisfied with thermals and battery life, it's not nearly as bad as it was with the Z5 back then. I run battery care at 80% max charge most days and reach about 40-20% charge at bedtime, and on days where I'm out of the house for a long time I disable battery care for a full 100% charge to extend battery life for heavy usage which works well. I'm mostly just happy to have a camera that's a joy to use again after using the XZ3 which was extremely mediocre to the point where taking photos was just not enjoyable.

 

[treff89]

Thank you for letting us know!
I was wondering if you are going to try underclock the device to see how it reacts with the thermals?

Even with the stock kernel, once rooted, you can easily use Franco Kernel Manager to disable some cores which will immensely improve any heating issues you might have.

 

[wednesyao]

I want to flash HongKong firmware but my phone is now using China firmware which version is higher than HongKong one, once I flash it my phone goes black. So I wonder if I unlock bootloader, can I flash lower firmware?

 

[mufunyo]

You should be able to downgrade to any official firmware with FlashTool without unlocking your bootloader. If your phone goes black it's more likely you're flashing incorrect firmware. You realise there are two distinct hardware variants of the 1 IV, maybe you picked the wrong one? There's the XQ-CT54 and the XQ-CT72. Mine is the XQ-CT54.

 

[wednesyao]

You should be able to downgrade to any official firmware with FlashTool without unlocking your bootloader. If your phone goes black it's more likely you're flashing incorrect firmware. You realise there are two distinct hardware variants of the 1 IV, maybe you picked the wrong one? There's the XQ-CT54 and the XQ-CT72. Mine is the XQ-CT54.

It can't downgrade once you upgrate to any newer version... My phone goes black either unlocked and locked BL. I can only recover it using Xperia Companion

 

[aussiebum]

Just select the Xperia 1 III from the list. The code will still work.

Thanks, I got the code generated, but now I'm stuck with getting the Fastboot Drivers installed.

The Sony "OEM Drivers" ADB drivers work fine when the phone's powered on, but when I switch over to Fastboot mode (vol up, plug in usb, blue led comes on), it's not recognised.

Sony's "fastboot driver" inf from 2014 does recognise the device, but I can't use that ancient inf with the latest Google USB drivers (Windows refuses to install the drivers due to hash not matching).

Would you be able to point or supply the fastboot driver you used to connect up your Xperia 1 IV?

EDIT: rebooting to fastboot via ADB brings up the "android fastbootd", but this doesn't seem like the actual Sony fastboot environment, so still can't oem unlock :/

Nevermind, finally figured it out. Followed the section about force-installing the Google Android Bootloader driver as per https://www.xda-developers.com/download-android-usb-drivers/ and that worked.

 

[Toasty1Too]

As this is the *only* current gen SD 8 phone with both a 3.5mm jack *and* an SD card slot, it may end up being my next upgrade. As my third hard requirement is at least the possibility of rooting it(I always do this before a phone can become my daily driver), this does a lot to seal the deal, so to speak, and is extremely helpful besides.

With my current phone(a Motorola g100) experiencing digitizer errors, even still under warranty, I may just upgrade and sell it after the warranty repair.

 

[mazany]

MinMinGuard 2.1.1

How did you get MinMinGuard to work? It seems to do nothing on my Xperia 1 IV. Are you using the auto mode?

 

[Dean F]

Bad experience with Z5? I have had my Z5 and Z5 Compact for 7 years now. Works flawlessly, never overheated. Maybe you have a faulty model?

 

[mufunyo]

How did you get MinMinGuard to work? It seems to do nothing on my Xperia 1 IV. Are you using the auto mode?

It's interesting, when I look in the MinMinGuard interface it doesn't seem to be working (it's showing it blocked 0 ads), but I don't get any ads in apps so I just assumed it was working anyway. I have to admit I'm also using AdAway which blocks ads using the hosts file (of course making sure to install Magisk Systemless hosts first), which could be making MinMinGuard redundant.