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Ever wanted to get root access to your Xperia Play, your Xperia Neo or your Xperia Arc? Now you can, because the geniuses over at the XDA-Developers forum have succeeded at granting themselves root access to Sony Ericsson’s newest smartphone models.

In order to get root access to your Xperia phone, first you will have to make sure that its bootloader has been stripped of its security. Surprisingly, Sony Ericsson itself has published tools do to exactly that.

That’s quite a surprise to see a company release security disabling tools for its own smartphones, isn’t it? Most manufacturers would rather not have hackers unlock their smartphones to run custom software on it. Anyway… once you’ve stripped your Xperia’s bootloader from its security, you can give yourself root access following these instructions.

Rooting Your Android

So many people have Android nowadays. The Android market share has grown incredibly rapidly in 2009 and 2010 and continues to do so in 2011. It’s no wonder that demand for root access to Android smartphones is on the rise. Thankfully, Android root demands are already being met thanks to to Gingerbreak tool. Also by XDA Developers.

Gingerbreak makes use of a security issue that is present in the Android Gingerbread operating system. Also, not everybody has success granting him or her self root access with the Gingerbreak tool. However, it can’t hurt to try. One advantage is that Gingerbreak does not require breaking the bootloader security first.

Not only does Gingerbreak work for Sony Ericsson Android smartphones. It can also be used for Android phones by other companies. The original posted of the Gingerbreak forum thread states that the break tool may also work for various Froyo and Honeycomb smartphones as well.

Gingerbreak can be installed as an APK file. After successfully achieving root access with this file, you will be able to run several applications that require super user access, which you normally do not have. Think of backup programs, that require access to all your files.

Also, this is a first step to custom software developed for Sony Ericsson Xperia smartphones and Android Gingerbread smartphones.