RonM said:
Whether or not you can turn off the wireless network depends on the phone.
I know I can turn off/on the wireless network. It's the phone network that I'm not sure of. There is an 'offline' option that allows one to turn on/off all 'online' activity, but I don't know if I can isolate just the phone network.
iPhones call it "Airplane Mode" when you turn off the cell service and use the phone as an expensive iPod.
I suppose that's the equivalent to my 'offline' setting, where I turn off all 'online' service.
I'm wondering why you would buy a phone, activate the cellular service and then want to turn off the phone….
I'm a one-in-a-thousand (or less) user. I just got my first cellphone about a month ago. I don't believe in being at everyone's disposal 24-7. To me a cellphone is basically like a dog leash.
I was at my Mom's place a few weeks ago and she had just bought a new cellphone.
She gave me her old one in case I wanted to use it (MotoRazr v3).
I hadn't bought my SO SIM card yet but when I turned on the Razr I noticed I got a buzz in my temples that I didn't like. This was with an expired Rogers SIM card inside the unit. I also noticed that with the unit turned off, but within reach, I could still feel some pressure in my temples. I resorted to putting it away in a drawer in another room (turned off).
Soon after that I bought a SO SIM and needed a phone to put it in (I didn't want to buy the SO Nokia phones), so I started looking for a GSM unlocked smartphone.
A smartphone I could use (for its non-phone features, camera, WiFi etc.).
I was buying the phone for emergency use (my family have been asking me for years why I haven't got one).
The number one 'feature' I looked for when starting the search for a new phone was its SAR rating. I found that the Samsung Blue Earth GT-S7550 had one of the lowest SAR ratings of any smartphone or even dumb phone.
The Blue Earth isn't sold in North America by the regular chain of distributors, so I bought one on eBay.
It has its positives/negatives, but the most important thing is that its SAR is low enough that I can actually live with it! I can leave it turned on, next to me (if I chose to do that) and not feel the pressure in my temples.
If you want a device that only connects to the Internet using wifi, there are much better devices than most cell phones that cost less money. PDAs are available in many forms including the iPod, as are larger devices like netbooks and iPads.
I have a Toshiba e830 PPC that's wonderful. It has WiFi and does what I need to do with its features.
I am now in a situation where I will be traveling soon and could use a cellphone for the travels (and after for emergency use when I return home).
Rather than buy a dumb phone and carry around the phone, camera and my PPC with me, I figured a smartphone might be the way to go for the trip.
To know if your phone can be used with the cell radio turned off and wifi turned on, you will need to be very specific about which make and model of phone you are using. If you bought it new, the manual that came with it might answer your questions. If the manual isn't that good, and you have the make and model of the phone, you can use Google and likely find all sorts of information about your exact phone.
The 'manual' has been next to useless for all the things I have wanted to know about the unit. Googling hasn't been too useful either.
In answer to your last question, if you can't access the page using wifi, it is likely because you have the phone set to browse using the cell service. As I said above — it is a phone and the default settings will be to use it as a phone. The phone needs to be set up properly to access the internet whether by the cell service (if you have paid for a browsing plan) or by wifi. It can't read your mind — you have to tell it what you want it to do in the settings. Unfortunately if you look through dozens of threads and posts in this forum you will see that the settings for browsing are not always straightforward and are extremely dependent on the exact make and model of your phone.
I had a 'Eureka moment' last night when I was fooling around with the phone.
I had downloaded a bunch of apps (Opera Mini, plus a bunch of others) and none of them were allowing me to run them successfully.
Just by a fluke, when I was inside the 'Games and more' menu and I pressed 'More' at the bottom, a menu came up for Protection/Details/Certificates/Connections.
I pressed 'connections' and noticed that **for these Games and more programs** my phone was set up to connect via Vodaphone Live (the default) and not my WiFi connection! Like who in their right mind would know to look here to correct the connection problems I was having??? (There is a standard Settings menu where you set your connections).
So this was an important piece of the puzzle that was solved last night (Opera now runs fine).
There are still a few remaining pieces that remain unsolved.
-Can I turn off the phone connection and just use WiFi with the SIM card inside?
(I can use WiFi with the SIM card removed/no phone connection)
-Is there any 'Skype-like' software that I can use with this phone?
Skype only works on Windows Mobile phones and a limited number of other phones.
Thanks again for your help!