How do i completely disable the phone function?

[Guest Samsonite]

i want to turn my Magician into a toy for my 4 year old son by turning it into a movie player/drawing pad/ camera etc but dont want him to be able to dial the 999 services by mistake.

I know there is flight mode but that is still switchable by a fortuitous sets of taps and seeing that he has installed allsorts of stuff onto my desktop when left to his own devices, i dont believe that he wouldn't switch it all back on somehow!

I dont really want to physically disable the radio by opening and mauling the internals but dont know of any other way to make sure.

Does anyone have any ideas?

If not then does anyone have the best and cleanest way of hobbling the unit so that i get the same result?

[Guest]

i want to turn my Magician into a toy for my 4 year old son by turning it into a movie player/drawing pad/ camera etc but dont want him to be able to dial the 999 services by mistake.

I know there is flight mode but that is still switchable by a fortuitous sets of taps and seeing that he has installed allsorts of stuff onto my desktop when left to his own devices, i dont believe that he wouldn't switch it all back on somehow!

I dont really want to physically disable the radio by opening and mauling the internals but dont know of any other way to make sure.

Does anyone have any ideas?

If not then does anyone have the best and cleanest way of hobbling the unit so that i get the same result?

That's one lucky boy getting his very own Magician as his plaything! ;) Would it not work by putting in a SIM card that has been disconnected (from an old network following an upgrade for example). As far as I know, if the card has been disconnected, you can't make any calls - I could be wrong though! Another option is to put a PIN on the phone application. Beyond that, there is another option that may work though I have no knowledge about it. SPB Software do an application called SPB Kiosk with which you can restrict the phone to only applications you want it to run. Could be worth a look as they do a trial version Here

[Guest Samsonite]

thanks for that.. i'll have a look tomorrow...

i'm thinking more and more that a hardware solution is going to be better as i can see a software answer still being beaten by inquisitive fingers!

[Guest Swampie]

How about just not putting a SIM in it. I'm pretty sure that the Pocket PC based devices are fine without a SIM. In fact, this was certainly the case with a WM2003 XDA IIi a colleage has that we use for development.

In the UK, if no SIM is present, you cannot make 999 calls (or any other calls). Simple.

[Guest Samsonite]

must admit i havent taken the SIM out yet!

i was under the impression that even with no SIM a mobile phone device can still make 999 calls. Same as even with a keypad lock you can still call 999 and 112...

i'll try it later tho and find out...

[Guest Swampie]

must admit i havent taken the SIM out yet!

i was under the impression that even with no SIM a mobile phone device can still make 999 calls. Same as even with a keypad lock you can still call 999 and 112...

i'll try it later tho and find out...

The GSM spec requires handsets to support making emergency calls without a SIM (or a disabled SIM), and to roam onto other networks if you're out of coverage from your network provider. However (and this is a biggy), none of the UK networks actually allow/implemented it. No SIM, no calls. No coverage, no calls. There aren't any roaming agreements between UK networks (3 being a special case who have a 2G roaming agreement with Orange (used to be O2) when out of 3's 3G coverage but I believe still appears as 3 on the handset).

With regard to the roaming, UK coverage is pretty good, so having roaming for emergency calls isn't as important when compared to many other, larger less densely populated countries. For the no-SIM, no-call bit - the UK networks and emergency services want to be able to call back (or trace/identify) emergency callers. Without a SIM, they can't be called back (if the line drops or something), and also they cannot be traced to an individual should prank calls be made (okay, PAYG may not support this, but at least they can block the SIM if it happens repeatedly).

Many phones will say "Emergency calls only" when no SIM is present. That's the handset saying this. When the handset then tries to make a 999/112 call, it'll be rejected by the networks. These phones tend to be non-PDA/non-Smartphone type ones - which serve little use without a SIM. For the PDA/Smartphone ones, they still have the calendaring, maybe WiFi features too which can be used perfectly well without any network coverage/SIM.

So you should be safe with taking the SIM out and letting a kit play with it. Lets just hope he doesn't work out how to put a SIM in it! ;)