Disabling the cellular antenna?

localhost

Hello! I believe most of us are here because we value our privacy, and I'm no exception. With recent reports of cell carriers selling customer location data with minimal penalties, I have no reason to believe they will stop any time soon and that concerns me. I understand that turning off the SIM in my phone will digitally remove it from the phone so it's not connected anymore, but is there a way to prevent the cellular antenna from pinging surrounding towers entirely, even preventing 911 calls? I would like to assume "Airplane mode" would effectively disable all antenna's in the device, but I'm here looking for confirmation (or insights on how this can be accomplished) as i'm not willing to abuse the 911 system just to satisfy my curiosity.

Thank you!

fluxcondensator

localhost Hey there, calling 911 will override the airplane mode. A friend of mine successfully removed all cellular functionality of a pixel device by physically removing some components. Best regards, anon.

23Sha-ger

Airplane mode disables the radio, except Wi-Fi which you can manually turn on.
Calls are impossible with this mode, it's a hardware thing, nor "cellular antenna pinging" or whatever you meant by it.
Essentially a phone without an assosiated SIM is useless as a reliable tracking device unless it's specifically registered to you:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking

Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities, which will prevent your phone from being reached from the cellular network and stop your carrier (and anyone impersonating them to you) from tracking the device via the cellular radio. The baseband implements other functionality such as Wi-Fi and GPS functionality, but each of these components is separately sandboxed on the baseband and independent of each other. Enabling airplane mode disables the cellular radio, but Wi-Fi can be re-enabled and used without activating the cellular radio again. This allows using the device as a Wi-Fi only device.

unsheathe0498

23Sha-ger

I don't think this is quite right. Even without a SIM card, your phone will be in periodic contact with the various cell networks. The phone's IMEI is a persistent unique identified that will be collected. Even if it wasn't tied to you at purchase, a few timestamped coarse locations from cell trilateration (say, home, work, airport) are likely sufficient to identify you.

From the cell tracking FAQ:

Airplane mode is the only way to avoid the cellular network tracking your device and works correctly on the devices we support.