TWRP for Sony Xperia Z1
Team Win strives to provide a quality product. However, it is your decision to install our software on your device. Team Win takes no responsibility for any damage that may occur from installing or using TWRP.
Support Status: Current
Maintainer: sdtbarbarossa
Code Name: honami
The Xperia devices have a recovery-in-boot arrangement. This means that the recovery is booted using the regular kernel / boot image in the device. Team Win has worked with the FreeXperia device maintainers to come up with a way to extract the ramdisk from the FOTAKernel partition and use the ramdisk from that partition instead of the recovery that is included in the boot image of your device. This means that if you install current CM nightlies and flash TWRP to the FOTAKernel partition, you will be able to use TWRP instead of the CWM or CM recovery that normally comes in a CM boot image. Other boot images including stock kernels can be repacked to include this extraction utility to allow you to use TWRP from the FOTAKernel partition. This setup allows you to choose what recovery you want to have installed and allows you to update your recovery more easily. Unfortunately this setup requires that the boot image that you have installed include the ramdisk extraction utility. The source for this utility is here:
https://github.com/Dees-Troy/extract_elf_ramdisk
This setup means that you must have a kernel or boot image installed that will use the FOTAKernel method. This utility is designed to work in conjunction with the current methods that most AOSP ROMs, like OmniROM or CyanogenMod, will support. Some rare stock kernels may also support the FOTAKernel method.
What does all this mean? It means that TWRP may not work on your device unless you install other custom software as well. Check with your ROM developer to see what they support.
Download the Official TWRP App (root required):
Install the app and open it. Agree to the Terms. Select TWRP Flash. Select your device from the device list (honami) and choose a version. The file will download to your Downloads folder. Browse to and select the file. Tap on Flash to Recovery. Find out more about the app here.
Current and past versions of TWRP can be found at one of the mirrors below:
Download the latest TWRP image file (.img) from the download link and boot TWRP. Go to install and find and select the Images... button. Browse to the image that you downloaded and select it. Choose recovery and swipe to flash.
Download the latest image file (.img) from the download link above. Place it in the root of your /sdcard folder and rename it to twrp.img. Run the following commands via adb shell or a terminal emulator app:
su
dd if=/sdcard/twrp.img of=/dev/block/platform/msm_sdcc.1/by-name/FOTAKernel