You must be asking yourself

did I read that right.

The answer is yes!!!

I can tell you this from experience, never under estimate the will of a free mind.

If you read my article on how to bring new life to your Xperia X1, then you know we have the guy's over at XDA to thank for this. There are a few Dev's working on Roms for the X10 and I have been playing with the Rom made by Jerpelea. Keep in mind that all his hard work is being done for free and the love of making a device do something that the original maker (SE) has not been willing to do.

If you read my article about Sony Ericsson X10 to young to die then you will want to read the rest.

A few thoughts before we begin

I'll keep this short as I know this is not why you are, but remember it is us the users who make things change in the market. This mod to get Android 2.3.3 on our X10's is not a full install as SE has locked down the boot loader. For reasons unknown to to me SE has decided to not allow users to easily install any version of android other than the one they want. I'm sure this is to push along sales for their new devices, you see if the boot loader was not locked down, we all could just install Cyanogenmod. If you have not heard about this check out the link, very impressive stuff. So now my not even one year old X10 is just as good today (wait it's even better) as it was when I bought it. Why buy a new handset to just get the latest version of Android?

The power of numbers!!

So lets all do something as a whole and prove to SE we the consumer are the ones who dictate what is the best way to do business and send them an email explaining your concern. An example of what one may complain about is, Why is it my not even one year old X10 is not going to be able to use flash? Why should I have to spend another $6.00 to just get a feature that is been available almost from the day this phone was released. You get the idea, just send them a note and let them know, trust me if there market share drops and keeps dropping they will jump on board to keep us the user happy.

On to the Good Stuff

Let me start by saying this is not for the everyday user, as there are great guides on how to do all this, it still takes a lot of patience and understanding of the terminology. My advise is read, then read some more and finally read. I can't express this enough, as it's hard but not impossible you can brick (geek term means phone is dead paper weight) your phone, but even if you so brick your phone there are also guides on how to un-brick your phone. Consider your self warned and have fun.

Lets cover why you might want to do this

The big one for me was getting a flash enabled browser, well this is in the new version.

Do you remember the rumours that our X10 was going to get pinch zoom with the SE update? Well with a few tweaks you will now have it. I must say this was one feature I didn't care about, but now that I have it. It's a must have

No need to worry about missing out on new app's, keep in mind the developers will most likely be updating and creating new app's for the more current version of Android. Now you will always be able to get that new app you heard about, no need to worry about having an older un-supported version of Android.

If security is a concern, well having a more up to date version of any OS is the best way to keep your info safe!!

Save money buy keeping that phone longer, no need to get caught up buying a new phone to get the latest version.

Last but not least, do something that SE is not willing to do.

X10 Version

First things first make sure you have upgraded your x10 to Android 2.1 before you start.

You can do this buy connecting your phone to your computer and running the SEUS update.

This also makes sure you have the right drivers installed on your computer.

Rooting

First thing you need to do is root your phone, the purpose of rooting is to give you access to the OS, and this will also install Super user app.

* Download SuperOneClick to your PC, you can find it here.
* Now Enable USB de-bugging mode on your Xperia X10: Settings –> Applications –> Development –> Tick ‘USB debugging’.










* You can now connect your X10 to your computer with the usb cable, it's important to not mount the sd card.












* Now double click the SuperOneClick.exe, and choose the universal tab on top.















* Now simply click on the Root tab and wait for the process to finish, if it takes a while that's normal.

Ok give yourself a pat on the back you just rooted your x10 and it's ready to install xRecovery (as of this writing xRecovery is at .3). If by chance you had an issue, you can read more about rooting Here.

If you rooted your phone already, follow the next steps below.

Install xRecovery & Busy Box

You can download xRecovery from here.

Once you have downloaded the xRecovery.apk, you will need to copy the file to the phone. You can use blue tooth, usb or power off and remove your sd card. Just remember where you copy xRecovery.apk on the sd card. Now you will need a file browser, you can use any one you like, but I use and can confirm that Estrongs works well with the new version of Android. You can get ES Strong File Manager here. You will also need to install busybox, on your phone do a search in the market for busybox. If you can't find busybox go ahead and install titanium backup, that will also install busybox.

Now that you can see the xRecovery.apk, go ahead and click on it to install.

* Ok you should now be looking at a screen that looks like this












* Go ahead and click on install xRecovery.
* Now that xRecovery is installed, go ahead and shut down your phone and remove the sd card. you now need to put the sd card into your computer and copy over some files.

Getting the Rom (Android 2.3.3)

* Ok the rom I'm using is Jerpelea's, which you will find here.
* Once you have downloaded the file, extract the contents to a folder on your sd card. I used a folder called CM7.









* Now put your phone back together but don't start it.

Installing Android 2.3.3

* Turn on the phone and as soon as you see the white Sony Ericsson letters start hitting the back key.

















* You will now see a screen that looks like this.


















* First things first, here is a list of what it say's in order;

Reboot Phone

Install update zip from sd

Factory Reset

Wipe Cache

Install custom zip

Backup and restore

Partition Tools

Advanced options

*To move around, the volume keys move you up and down. The home button selects the option and return goes back.

* So lets first make a backup of your phone, so select backup and restore and do a backup

* No we need to clean the phone;

Factory Reset, make sure to not restart the phone as now it's empty.

Wipe cache

Go to advance

Wipe davik Cache

Wipe battery Stats

Now go back to the main menu with all the options

Are you Ready? lets install Android 2.3.3

* Ok now select Install custom zip.
* Select choose custom zip from sd card and go to the folder we created earlier and select the file called update.zip.
* when the phone says it's done select the top option to reboot phone.

Now before you get to excited!!!

there are a few things you will want to do to make this as stable as possible. First let the phone settle in for 30 minutes. this will let the new OS build up its caches and sort things out. Just remember you waited this long no need to rush it at this point. Now you really not understand this but follow these steps and you will be ok.

1. Skip through adding any google stuff for now, do not open any app's yet!
2. Go to settings,turn on wifi and join your network. Restart your phone. now go back to settings and uncheck wifi. Restart your phone, but this time go back into xRecovery and repair permissions (look in advance options). Then select reboot phone. When the phone starts, go back to settings and re-check wifi. It should now be good.
3. Go into the app's folder and start file manager. Now go back to the CM7 folder and look for the folder called app's and install the app's in that folder.
4. Now you can setup google, you will be given a choice of what google app's to install, this is entirely up to you. (I installed them all)
5. Ok login to the market and look for a browser called Skyfire, install this and open it. this seems to work out a glitch with the default browser.
6. Now you can add Twitter, I have had no issue's with twitter.
7. This app can be a little tricky, as I have not had an issue some users have had a rough time getting it to run. So go ahead and add facebook. Just now that it will crash and that's to be expected. Once it crashes, go into the market and go to my app's, remove facebook. Now reinstall face book. Now restart your phone and go back into xRecovery and repair the permissions again. Now reboot your phone.
8. You can now start adding your app's.

It's a Beta

yes folks this is beta software and you can expect it to have a few issue's. Now I do use this a my daily, I find it very stable. there are a few app's and things that are not implemented yet, like skype does not work, the camera has not been setup. So as much as I have gone on about the greatness of this, it does have a few draw backs. But for me the trade off is well worth the reward. The dev (Jerpelea) works on the rom and keeps improving on it and i'm very confident that in the near future we will have a fully working version of 2.3.3 on our X10.

Conclusion

If you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them below, if you need immediate support i recommend you head over to XDA, you can get there from here.

Now if you have been successful and would like to see more of this kind of development continue, I recommend you follow this link and make a donation to the dev who has put all this together. Just look for his Paypal link.

Now if you are the type who wants to do this but is afraid, I can do this for you for a small fee of 20.00, if you need to ship the phone you will be responsible for the shipping. you can contact me here.