This took pretty long but TeamWin has now finally added support for TWRP recovery for the Sony Xperia ZL. And since device belongs to TWRP’s currently supported device list, you also get the latest TWRP recovery version 2.8.7.0 with certain improvements and enhancements like the addition of resize2fs feature.
Sony Xperia devices have different arrangements for recovery than other OEMs. The recovery is booted through the boot image / kernel of a device and that creates problem when you flash a custom ROM with a different custom boot image. To avoid this issue, TeamWin worked with FreeXperia project maintainers to use ramdisk from FOTAKernel instead of the recovery that’s included in the boot image / kernel of a device. This setup requires that you a have custom kernel installed on your device which supports ramdisk extraction utility. Generally, all AOSP based custom ROMs on Xperia devices come with this utility, and for stock ROMs, you may find a custom kernel with the support for this utility.
So in order to flash TWRP recovery you must have kernel/boot image on your Xperia ZL with ramdisk extraction utility support, otherwise TWRP recovery won’t boot on your device.
Once you make sure you’ve a supported kernel for TWRP recovery installed on your device, go ahead and download/install TWRP recovery using the instructions below:
[icon name=”download” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Download TWRP Recovery for Xperia ZLHow to Install TWRP Recovery .img file on Xperia ZL
ROOT REQUIRED
- Download the twrp-2.8.x.x-odin.img file from the link above to your Xperia ZL.
- Download and install Flashify App from Play Store [link →].
- Open Flashify and grant it root access when it asks.
- Now select the “Recovery image” option under flashing options and select the twrp-2.8.x.x-odin.img file that you downloaded on your device.
- Press Yup! to confirm flashing.
- Once flashing process finishes, the app will ask if you want to reboot, do it.
TWRP Recovery should now be installed on your Sony Xperia ZL. Enjoy!
