disable phone function & undo

[hcpchang]

Plan to use the new fonepad as tablet. Two questions:
1. anyway to disable the cell phone feature to save battery
2. any undo key / move

Thanks,

 

[stevovr]

afaik the phone feature is tied to the 3g mobile data connection. if you go into settings, data usage, at the top you can turn off mobile data and your tablet will be wifi only. or don't put a sim card in it and it ill be wifi only. kind of defeats the purpose of the device but each to their own

 

[Steve Gouldstone]

afaik the phone feature is tied to the 3g mobile data connection. if you go into settings, data usage, at the top you can turn off mobile data and your tablet will be wifi only. or don't put a sim card in it and it ill be wifi only. kind of defeats the purpose of the device but each to their own

I don't think this will do what the OP wants. Disabling mobile data will certainly use Wi-Fi only but it will not stop the phone from constantly connecting to base stations for the phone. I can understand the requirement as I want the same, I don't want to keep taking the SIM out as this will eventually wear out the SIM, the socket or the removable back (plus where do you put the SIM?).

I want to have the 3G capabilities of the tablet available all the time (ie whenever I choose to enable mobile data) but only have the phone part working sometimes (as I don't plan to use it as my primary phone, but more as a useful secondary phone). So I would like to be able to turn the phone on/off just as I can turn mobile data on/off.

I don't think there is any way you can do this. It would be a very useful thing for Asus to add to the firmware.

 

[hcpchang]

Thanks Steve. That is what I was looking fort to save the battery.

 

[eckl]

Perhaps you can put it into Airplane mode. That will save battery and keep the phone portion off. And you can still turn on/off Wi-Fi with the pull down menu.

 

[stevovr]

Perhaps you can put it into Airplane mode. That will save battery and keep the phone portion off. And you can still turn on/off Wi-Fi with the pull down menu.

Forgot about this feature. Should be what the OP is looking for.

 

[Steve Gouldstone]

Perhaps you can put it into Airplane mode. That will save battery and keep the phone portion off. And you can still turn on/off Wi-Fi with the pull down menu.

Mmm yes, I hadn't thought of that. It never occurred to me that you would be able to turn on wi-fi in airplane mode as surely you can then transmit data too? Anyway this does work.

So this goes most of the way to what me and the OP want, the ability to turn off the phone functions without taking out the SIM. So this will allow us to save the battery power while we are just using the device as a tablet.

However, it is not completely there. You cannot turn on mobile data in airplane mode - so the device cannot be used in 3G web browsing mode without the phone being enabled.

It is a good workaround though.

Much better, IMO, would be a simple toggle in the toggle (not sure what to call it) panel with the others (Wifi on/off, sound on/off etc) which enables you to turn the phone functions on and off too. This could perhaps be accompanied by a little red/green phone icon in the notification bar.

Another benefit of this would be to perhaps stop all those ***** reviewers of the FonePad who just say all the way through "but what an ***** you look with this as a phone", "what a stupid phone this size" etc etc. Please just ignore the phone functions and review it as a tablet WITH a phone as well for when you need it. This abaility to toggle the phone on/off would make it easier for these simple minded people to review it as a tablet!