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My wife got a new phone with a new service, so I get to have her old phone to play around with.

Since the old phone no longer has cell phone service, I want to completely disable the cell phone or radio portion of the phone so that it doesn't eat up battery. This is a CMDA phone, so there's no SIM card I can just take out.

Enabling Airplane mode works just fine, except that also turns of WIFI, which I have to manually turn on. And if I reboot, the phone stays in Airplane mode, but it turns WIFI back off.

Is there a way to modify the phone to turn off the cell portion completely and permanently, at least to be able to withstand a reboot (not necessarily a factory reset)?

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If it matters, the phone is rooted and has a custom Gingerbread ROM installed. – Stephen Schrauger Dec 13 '12 at 16:16

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You could use some automation app to do this, having two steps in its task: Switch to airplane mode, and then enable WiFi. Tasker is one app that can handle this, but I'm pretty sure some of the free profile-switchers are also capable of this. With Tasker you could place this with a profile executing as soon as Tasker is started -- other apps might provide "default/base profiles" for this (like Locale does), or you might have to add it to each profile you create to make sure it always works.

Depending on your device, you could also use Dazzle Configurable Switcher (which comes free). As the name suggests, it offers a bar with "toggle switches" which you can configure freely. One of the toggles is for the (cell) Radio. But not all devices support this: it worked fine on my HTC Wildfire, but my Motorola Milestone 2 won't let me switch that separately. Here the state should be remembered even after reboot -- but again that might depend on the device.

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I found another solution and posted it, but I'm marking yours as accepted because I ended up following your suggestion (using Llama instead of Tasker, though). Just a simple event that runs on boot to activate Airplane mode, then enable Wifi. – Stephen Schrauger Dec 14 '12 at 14:25
Llama is a fine solution as well. Not that powerful as Tasker, but maybe easier to handle for non-techies. Most important: problem solved :) – Izzy Dec 14 '12 at 14:42
Also, it's free. Since it does all I need, I've not seen the need to upgrade to the paid app Tasker. Maybe in the future; I do love to tinker. :-) – Stephen Schrauger Dec 14 '12 at 14:45
up vote 0 down vote

Looks like someone already figured this out and made a script using Script Manager that runs the script on boot. It turns the radio (cell) off, just the same as activating airplane mode, except that it leaves all other wireless settings alone (that is, bluetooth, wifi, etc).

Or you can install a flashable zip described in this forum that you load in recovery mode.

Removes unnecessary apps (Messaging.apk, Phone.apk, TelephonyProvider.apk, Mms.apk, TelocationProvider.apk)
Completely turns off cell radio on bootup
Installs the radiooptions binary in case your ROM does not include it
Prevents emergency calls and 911 calls (good for giving your kids your old phone to play with)
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