We’ve already seen a way to root the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc and Xperia Play. However that method required the boot loader to be unlocked, which you can do through Sony Ericsson’s boot loader unlocking page. For most who want to root their phone, this isn’t too much of a problem, however some users have stated that they wanted a root method, without having to unlock the boot loader. Fortunately a way has now been found.
The root works on the Xperia Arc and Xperia Play but, is based on the Android 2.3 root method. To do so, you will need to download an APK file, which you can get from here. Then just put it on your SD card and install on the phone. Some users are reporting that they are receiving a “could not extract assets” error message. If you get this you will need to execute adb shell rmdir /data/local/tmp and then adb shell mkdir /data/local/tmp which should solve the problem.
