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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

Now that one major market is finally doing it, this will spread and eventually become the norm. What I hope we don’t lose in the process is “airplane mode” as a concept, even if the name becomes an anachronism.

Being able to temporarily “unplug the cable” from a wireless device is a valuable feature, even if it’s no longer required by regulation.

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> Being able to temporarily “unplug the cable” from a wireless device is a valuable feature, even if it’s no longer required by regulation.

But airplane mode means that wifi is still enabled/possible for quite some time.

On every phone I've used "airplane mode" turns off all wireless functionality, and then you can optionally turn Wi-Fi back on while remaining in airplane mode. Are there devices that don't work this way?

iPhones since about 2015

I just checked, on my iphone airplane mode turns off wifi. Doesnt turn off bluetooth though.

My Samsung turns off bluetooth if nothing is connected to it but doesn't if something is. Pretty hand for when you're listening to music on your flight and you turn on airplane mode.

The precise behavior of Airplane mode on iOS / WatchOS is dependent on the user’s interactions. The default is to turn off everything but Bluetooth. But, if you turn Airplane mode ON and then turn Wi-Fi on, iOS will remember this preference.

You can learn more about Airplane mode on Apple’s website:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204234

It doesn't completely turn off Wi-Fi either, it just disconnects from the current network.

Switching on airplane mode might switch off wifi, but "being in airplane mode" does not mean wifi is off, because wifi is still allowed in airplane mode.

I'm just saying this here because I thought for quite some time that airplane mode means no radio signals from the phone.

But Wifi is radio signals?

Just wait until iPhone 20 removes the consumer option to power off your phone and starts to send you panic notifications that you are near 20% battery! And we might lose our valuable tracking information!

Or even better, failing to have consistant location data is a violation of warranty!

I use airplane mode to cycle the radio. Sometimes the firmware gets wedged and cycling it (by turning airplane mode on and then off) forces it to reset and reacquire a signal, which leads to better connectivity.

i used it to get data to reconnect and potentially give me a new ip address. that's needed because i am in a country where some ip addresses are apparently being abused and as a result get blocked by some services.

OS vendors could easily add a "restart and rearm the radio" control.

I think if it's not required it is definitely going to go away. Trackers want to track. This goes for ad networks as well as TLAs.

I hope people vote with their wallets then, but realistically speaking people just buy whatever Apple throws out :(

I mean, it's not a feature which would get my "voting" attention. While I do hope for it to stay, I don't recall any situation when I wanted for my phone to stop doing its primary (well, at least for me still it is primary) function of receiving phone call and SMS.

It's a helpful low-power mode, especially when traveling in areas where you no there's no signal.

Oh right, I forgot as I don't travel too much and almost whole Poland is reasonably well covered.

I use it at night when I want to sleep without interuptions. I guess you can always just turn the phone off entirely. Assuming that doesn't become impossible also.

If we're talking Apple devices, Focus mode is explicitly defined for that case, and allows fine-grained settings for specific sources to allow through, so you can still get, e.g. high-priority midnight calls from the family/lawyer/local comic book shop.

i don't understand why you're being downvoted, that's exactly what it is for. android users can use do not disturb as well.

People call you at night?!

i have friends on different timezones, and they talk in groups that are important to me, so i don't want to silence these groups. it's far easier to silence the whole phone for the night. airplane mode is an easy way to achieve that.

Perhaps, despite my age, I'm just an out-of-the-loop dinosaur, but I have no clue how does that work. Do phones nowadays have an option to dial multiple numbers to have a group phone call?

text messaging in chat groups. they still beep when a message appears in a group or at least when someone replies to a message i sent or mentions me. i have most groups on silent by default but some groups are important so for those i keep notifications on.

apart from that there are also voice group chats which on some apps start with a ring at least if i am explicitly invited. (though that usually doesn't happen when i am asleep)

Wouldn't simply muting the device be just as effective? (with the added bonus of being aware in the morning if somebody did actually try to reach out to you during the night)

You can even set the phone to automatically silence everything every night, but still let through phone calls from certain contacts in case of emergency.

Then you would be muting also alarms. You can configure complex setup and what not, with some sounds buzzing and some not, but people want one button solution and simplicity (for good reasons).

Just checked and the alarm still ringed despite phone being muted; at least on my phone, alarms need to be muted explicitly.

Not so much calls but emails, text messages, amber alerts, local hysteria about the weather, etc.

Yes I could probably figure out how to selective silence the alerts for these various thing based on time of day and type of message etc. but life is too short for that, I just want one easy way to shut everything up.

I'm starting to think I'm in minority having Wi-Fi, data, Bluetooth, NFC, GPS et cetera turned off while not actively using them...

I have Bluetooth and Location turned off unless I'm using them.

I have do not disturb setup for nighttime hours - if I’m using the phone I’ll see texts but otherwise it won’t go through unless someone is on my approved list or doublecalls

Very high chance of Apple removing it. Heck, AirPods Max have no power button. Someone at Apple is losing sleep over the fact people have control over the radios in their phone.

Certainly. They've already changed it such that "turning off" Wi-Fi or Bluetooth from the Control Centre doesn't actually turn off the radios, it simply disconnects any devices, or disconnects from any networks the device is currently connected to. You have to turn on Aeroplane Mode or go to the Settings app to actually turn them off.

Even then they could still be on. You have no guarantee

Source?

They changed it a few years ago so that they would automatically turn on again once you are at a different location, and if you wanted it permanent off, you can do so via settings app.

I found this to be an improvement in user experience because I would often turn off wifi in the control panel when I was on a weak wifi connection to force the phone to use the mobile network, and then I would forget to turn it back on when I went inside again.

This change made it so I did not have to remember to turn wifi on again.

However, I did not read anything about toggling in control panel not actually turning the radios off.

The EU will require manufacturers to enables sideloading, which will finally make powerful ad- / tracking-blockers on iOS possible. Also, they will require that everyone can easily change batteries. Even if that does not mean that a battery can easily removed temporarily, it probably also makes it easier to install custom hardware switches that turn off the phone entirely.

Personally, I think that the tracking hype has seen its peak.

You’re fucked if you have no signal for an extended period of time and you can’t go to airplane mode. It will keep searching at maximum power and run out of battery in 2 or 3 hours.

Why trust a button when you can just carry one of these around? https://www.teeltech.com/shop/faraday-bags/mission-darkness-...

I hate to break it to you, but this is a perfectly normal thing in Asia. You pay "roaming" rates for calls on board, so it naturally keeps calls short due to the higher per-minute cost.

It's been around for over a decade, and it isn't particularly annoying.

In fact, planes have had seatback phones since the '90s (you swiped your credit card to use it) and that also worked quite well.

It's perfectly normal for wireless devices to not have an off switch for wireless connections?

I assume they interpreted the second part of the GP comment (unplugging the cable) more in the attention/distraction sense, as I initially did.

When certain iOS devices are factory reset, they default to cellular data being turned on (and available using Apple-provisioned carrier credentials) to use mobile data service to activate even without connecting them to a local network.

I know at least a cellular iPad Mini has done this to me when I didn't want it to. (I was doing an experiment for a year where I try to keep Apple from knowing my location, via Wi-Fi VPN routers and no location services. FWIW, the experiment failed because of surveillance features like this.)

Afwall+ is your friend

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