Can I permanently disable the cell/radio of my phone? My wife got a new phone with a new service, so I get to have her old phone to play around with.

Since the old phone no longer has cell phone service, I want to completely disable the cell phone or radio portion of the phone so that it doesn't eat up battery. This is a CDMA phone, so there's no SIM card I can just take out.

Enabling Airplane mode works just fine, except that also turns of WIFI, which I have to manually turn on. And if I reboot, the phone stays in Airplane mode, but it turns WIFI back off.

Is there a way to modify the phone to turn off the cell portion completely and permanently, at least to be able to withstand a reboot (not necessarily a factory reset)?
Looks like someone already figured this out and made a script using Script Manager that runs the script on boot. It turns the radio (cell) off, just the same as activating airplane mode, except that it leaves all other wireless settings alone (that is, bluetooth, wifi, etc).

Or you can install a flashable zip described in this forum that you load in recovery mode.


  
  Removes unnecessary apps (Messaging.apk, Phone.apk, TelephonyProvider.apk, Mms.apk, TelocationProvider.apk)
  Completely turns off cell radio on bootup
  Installs the radiooptions binary in case your ROM does not include it
  Prevents emergency calls and 911 calls (good for giving your kids your old phone to play with)