Anyway, for Christmas, my eldest daughter received a Shine health/fitness monitoring thingy from a company called Misfit.
My wife and other daughter already own a Shine each, so they knew the eldest would enjoy it.
One of the cool things is that the Shine syncs to the mobile phone app. In my wifes case, to her Moto G, and the youngest to her iPhone 5.
The eldest has a Sony Xperia M which, we assumed, would work just as well.
Wrong!!
Apparently these devices use something called BLE - Bluetooth Low Emission or something.
So, we went to the Play Store on the Xperia to download the app for the Shine - only to receive a message telling us that the phone didn't support the app. What!!!
No problem - maybe it needs updating? A slow tedious (see my previous rants about BT and my broadband speeds!) download later and we can now see the app in the Play store! Download app - only to find it still reckons the phone isn't supported.
Some google research later, and I find that Sony were going to update the software on the phone, but, just before it was due, they pulled support and didn't bother.
Total ba****ds!
More google suggests a few things which may work - the most obvious to me is to install Cyanogen Mod. Sony apparently kindly allow you to unlock the bootloader on their phones - so over to their website to check if the Xperia M is in their list of phones which can obtain the unlock key.
Hurray!
The Xperia M shows up - so I get the code and begin setting up my laptop to unlock. Using an Ubuntu derivative, I can get the fastboot software straight from Synaptic - this is all looking great and simple!
Hold down the volume up button and connect phone to laptop - we get a successful connection with the blue light showing me we are in fastboot mode!
Enter the first lot of commands to check - and get a positive result. Now all I have to do is issue the unlock command!
Bugger!!
Failure!!
Failed:
What? Seems that not all Xperia M phones can be unlocked. The daughters has a flag set to prevent the unlocking which can be seen by issuing a load of hashes and stars to get into hidden bits of the stupid thing (I got the actual command from a website)
OK - we can try another route to solve the issue.
This one was much more fun - lets root the thing!
The easiest option seemed to be using a rooting tool called Towelroot by Geohot - a name which will be familiar to those who use a jailbroken iPhone I expect.
Anyway, downloaded this tool, ran it, clicked the button marked Let it Ra1n - and away we go.
Now to sort out the BLE issue.
Sony's support forum has a pretty lengthy discussion on the BLE problem with the M, and, on page 8, post number 72 has a pretty good answer!
https://talk.sonymobile.com/t5/Xperia-M-M-dual/Does-Xperia-M-support-Bluetooth-BLE/td-p/673259/page/8
It is a simple case of installing a xml file which "allows" the BLE to be enabled.
Yes - the hardware is all there - just that Sony can't be arsed to write a couple of lines of code which could be rolled out really easily.
It comes down to a kind soul to give the code needed and a clue how to install it.
As it happens, in my case it was much easier to install than the poster makes out.
I simply downloaded the code and then, using ES File Explorer with the Edit as Root option enabled, simply copied and pasted to the Permissions folder. Rebooted the phone and ....
Success!!
So Sony, why the hell couldn't you have just enabled this BLE in the first place?
Or at least had the decency to let folks know how to fix it (assuming the user has root and a basic knowledge of commands).
I will NEVER buy a Sony product as long as I live - and will advise all my contacts not to do so if they can avoid it.
