Installing Cyanogenmod 13 Marshmallow On Xperia Arc (LT15i) and Arc S (LT18i)

Recently, Cyanogenmod released CM13 (Marshmallow) for 2011 Sony Xperia devices. The custom rom shared in this article is specifically meant for Xperia Arc and Arc S (anzu). The ROM is based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This rom has been tested to be fully working on Xperia Arc S (LT18i) by me. So far, it runs smoothly. The only bug in this ROM is with the Bluetooth. It sometimes refuse to enable.

Since the internal storage of this device is small, a fast SDcard is required to be used as the data partition. If you wish to install this rom on your device, read and follow the three easy steps below carefully.

Downloads

1. Cyanogenmod 13.0 for Arc and Arc S -  Download
2. Recommended Gapps -  Download
3. Adb/Fastboot package (Important)  -  Download - Mirror
4. MiniTool Partition Wizard  -  Download

Note: LT15i (Arc) users need to flash LT18i (Arc S) ftf flash file (ICS 4.1.B.0.587).

HOW TO INSTALL CM13 ON XPERIA ARC & ARC S

Step One: Partitioning and Formatting sdcard to ext4 or F2FS

1. Connect sdcard to PC via card reader or insert in your device and mount as mass storage
2. Install and launch MiniTool Partition Wizard on pc
3. From the listed drives, select your sdcard and click on Delete
4. Now click on Create
5. From the displayed New Partition Options, configure as below
 - Create As: Primary
 - File System: Unformatted

6. Leave every other option as is, then click Ok
7. Now click on Apply, and select Yes from the popup.
8. Wait for the process to complete.
9. Done.

You can also watch this brief video guide on how to format your sdcard to F2FS for CM13 installation:

Step Two: Preparing To Flash CM13

1. Extract the download fastboot/adb package to desktop. Should look like this C:\…\Desktop\adb
2. Now, extract boot.img from CM13 rom package to the the adb folder on your desktop. That is: copy boot.img  to C:\…\Desktop\adb
3. Rename the downloaded CM13 package to update.zip
4. Rename also the download Gapps package to gapps.zip
5. Renaming the downloaded packages helps you avoid making mistakes when typing the file names in cmd.
6. Copy both files (update.zip and gapps.zip) to C:\…\Desktop\adb, or wherever you adb files are located.

Step Three (Final step): Flashing CM13

1. Insert the formatted sdcard to your device and power off
2. Connect to PC in fastboot mode (hold menu button and connect USB cable)
3. Launch cmd from your fastboot/adb folder (Hold Shift button while right-clicking on the adb/fastboot folder, then select Open Command Window here)
4. Type in these commands:



fastboot flash boot boot.img

fastboot reboot

5. While the device is booting up, disconnect from pc and press the Volume down button repeatedly to boot into recovery mode.
6. Once in recovery, perform the following
- Factory reset > full factory reset
- Wipe cache
- Advanced > wipe system partition

7. Now select Apply Update > Apply from ADB
8. Connect the device back to PC via USB cable and type the following commands:

adb sideload update.zip




Wait for the loading process to complete. If it stops at 47% don’t panic, just go ahead with the remaining step.


adb sideload gapps.zip





9. Once this completes loading, disconnect from PC and reboot device to system.
10. Done.

See some of my screenshots below…