So, I have been looking for a way to get root on this rather nice little old sony smartphone, and now it exists, without messing around with windows only computer tools to do it. The app can be found here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/devdb/project/dl/?id=21385
and here is the proof of success:
So now I can really do some work on this little baby. Integrate updates, remove bloatware, etc.
w00t!
Update
Well, it wasn't quite so straightforward. It gave root but disabled the ability for other apps to modify the system partition. Meaning I couldn't install busybox and integrate updates or anything. I finally figured out I can disable its usage monitoring and device administrator capabilities (what is the deal with this being allowed to be set by the installation permissions check???) disabled it, and now I am trying to remove the damned app, because it's obviously locking it. Well, and then install the proper SuperSU on it that won't have this idiotic limitation.
So I might be prematurely excited.
update 2
I discovered that I can unlock the bootloader on my phone. The aqua version is no different in the internals to the non-aqua version, and I plugged in my IMEI code and it generated an unlock code and now the phone is fully unlocked. So maybe there will be some progress on this yet...
Now it's working
With busybox on now... the bootloader unlock was necessary. Now the system partition can be remounted and the busybox was installed. Now I can start tweaking at last!
Update 4
Under lollipop, a whole bunch of apps refused to run after I rooted it, so I reflashed to 4.4.4. I still had a couple of things to struggle with, the sony_ric thing that forcibly blocks remounting the system as read/write, and it used kingo root instead of kingroot. I don't like any version of android since about 4.4, the permissions systems are so complicated and I just don't understand why getting full control of my own device has to be so goddamned complicated. At least Sony have had the decency to let me unlock the bootloader.