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I started recently to look up for a way to permanently disable my wifi, bluetooth, NFS, Network and GPS. Unfortunately I didnt find a proper method to do that. There was the option to physically break the hardwares, but I didnt want to risk that, if I get something wrong there I wouldnt have a 2nd chance. Except of that, there was only some ways to disable the wifi but it was easy to re-enable it again.

Anyways I figured out, that I need to root my device in order to remove hardware files, but the problem is I dont know WHICH files would be okay to remove.

I'm using a samsung galaxy s8 with Android 9 Pie

Till now I rooted my device twice and deleted hardware files,

the first time I deleted wifi hardware files from the system/etc/permissions folder. That lead to brick my phone.

The second time I deleted hardware files of bluetooth and nfc from:

system/lib

system/lib64

system/vendor/etc/init

system/vendor/etc

system/vendor/lib64

system/vendor/permessions

surprisingly it worked, I totally disabled bluetooth and nfc.

Then I wanted to proceed to remove gps (I figured out S8 aint using gps but gnss) so I removed the gnss files and folders. But this time, it bricked my phone, so I had to reinstall the samsung firmware again and now I rooted my device again.

Before I start trying again, I would like to ask you, if any of you have some knowledge about this and if there is any no-go files, which I should never remove or smth.

I dont really just want to try out over and over, it is taking much time to do all this... I hope somebody can help me out.

Additionally, do any of you know how the network hardware is called? basically the hardware which lets you call people or just the hardware which connects to a network provider.

The reason why I want to do this shouldnt be important right? but if you want to know why:

I want to keep my privacy. I want to be able to connect to the internet only via ethernet cable and also I want to use my device more as a map to plan routes, camera, calc etc.

ALOT of other people want to do this too, but nobody (after searching for over 20 hours) had the right solution. Every way I found, it was possible to reenable it easily.

Thank you for taking your time and reading my issue! I hope you can help!!

I will give an update about this anyways!

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    There are various dependencies between the drivers, services, and so on. Just deleting everything is not a good solution as Android is very complex and references to services are scattered among the whole system. The correct way would be to develop an own custom ROM. Then you could disable those features before building the ROM and leave out drivers, services and other parts you don't want. Note that question on ROM development are off-topic here.
    – Robert
    Mar 2, 2021 at 16:06
  • I see, thank you for the tip. I will try to learn how to do that.
    – MrJami
    Mar 2, 2021 at 16:20
  • 1
    An even easier and safer approach is to disable the HAL native service related to the functionality you want to disable. Android doesn't interact with the hardware directly but depends on vendor provided HALs (binary blobs) which mostly run as native init services. You can simply run stop or setprop ctl.stop to stop a service and then test if the feature still works. If it doesn't you can edit the related .rc file to disable the service permanently. In case of legacy HALs, though, you need to delete (or just rename) the files. Because they are shared libraries, not executable files.
    – Irfan Latif
    Mar 2, 2021 at 16:44
  • why not just run automation app for toggle airplane mode
    – alecxs
    Mar 2, 2021 at 21:38

1 Answer 1

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I'm using a samsung galaxy s8 with Android 9 Pie

Model: SM-G950F

Update:

I found a way to disable the following hardware:

(disclaimer: there is probably tons of methods to permanently disable hardware, but this is how it worked for me)

Ofc you need to root you device, I used TWRP as boot loader.

MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR DEVICE

you could loose your data forever!! and dont do the same mistake I did, not backing up the contacts.

Contacts are NOT in the internal storage, therefore you need to do a back up while rooted!!!

Tip: every file you edit or delete, make a backup of the original one and name it differently. If your android bricked, then you can use TWRP and delete the modified file and rename the backup again to the original name. This would help you to prevent wasting much time.

Bluetooth:

Delete the following file:

/system/vendor/lib64/hw/[email protected]

WiFi:

Delete the following file:

/system/vendor/lib64/[email protected]

GPS:

Delete the following file:

/system/vendor/etc/gnss/gps.xml

Some files I just edited them, these are permissions file, if you delete them completely, android wont work anymore.

You need to delete everything between <permissions></permissions>

You can edit the files using text editor

GPS: Edit the following file:

/system/vendor/etc/permissions/android.hardware.location.gps.xml

NFC: Edit the following file:

/system/vendor/etc/permissions/android.hardware.nfc.xml

Telephony: I tried to dial emergency numbers, which should be actually possible with or without a sim card, but it didnt work.

Edit the following file:

/system/vendor/etc/permissions/android.hardware.telephony.gsm.xml

And that's it, now just restart your android and it should work with no problems.

I would recommend to download everything you want to have on your phone, before you get rid of wifi.

WARNING:

Most google applications like google map wont work, after you get rid of the gnss/gps. Google doesnt like it, if you turn off your location lol

The network data (LTE, 4G ...etc) is not tested and I am not sure if it is even disabled, I have the feeling that Telephony is not the same. I dont use a sim card anyways, so yeah. But if I found out a solution for that too, I will post it here for sure!

have fun!!

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