How to Flash a Custom Recovery on the Sony Xperia Play

Maybe you don’t like being stuck at Gingerbread on your Xperia Play as your friends are on Jelly Bean? Maybe you’re interested in giving custom ROMs a shot? Either way, flashing a custom recovery should help you. A custom recovery will not just let you flash ROMs based on GB, but will help you get the ROMs that are based on ICS and even on Jelly Bean. Sounds interesting? huh. Follow the guide given below and you should have ClockworkMod Recovery installed on your device. And after that, let the customization begin!

I. Before You Begin:

1. You must have rooted your device before doing this procedure. You can check out our root guides here and here, for Gingerbread and ICS, respectively.

2. You must have unlocked bootloader of your device. You can do so from here.

3. This works on Windows based PCs only.

II. Downloading Required Files:

1. RecoverX (Download link’s available in the first post)

III. Installing ClockworkMod Recovery on the Sony Xperia Play:

1. Download and place the RecoverX archive onto your Desktop.

2. Unzip files from the archive to your Desktop.

3. Turn ON the USB debugging option on your device by heading to Menu>>Settings>>Applications>>Development>>USB debugging.

4. Once enabled, connect your device to your PC using the USB cable.

5. Now launch the RecoverX tool by double-clicking on its executable file available on your Desktop.

6. Select Sony Ericsson from the Brand dropdown menu.

7. Select Xperia Play from the Device dropdown menu.

8. Hit Next and follow the on-screen instructions.

9. And you’re all done!

Brilliant! Your device has been successfully flashed with CWM Recovery and it can be accessed just the way you access stock recovery.  Cheers as you now have something really cool to play around with!

IV. Flash a Custom ROM (Optional):

1. If you are ready to flash custom ROMs on your device, head to the How To Flash a Custom ROM on the Sony Xperia Play to learn how to do that.

If this procedure helped you please thank/donate to the original developers here.

If you need help with this procedure, please ask in the comments below or in the forum.

This is part of our Android How To’s. We have how to’s on rooting, loading ROMs, and tons of other tips and tricks for your specific device or for Android devices in general! For all of our Android How To’s, head here.