Help Activating Eris without having 3G service

[MaukaRunner]

I'm getting a new phone and I'm passing my Incredible to my wife and her Eris to my son. I was wondering if we could use the phone without 3G service so all we would pay is just the minutes for phone use.

He can hook up to the internet with Wi-fi at home or other places.

Has anyone done this or asked Verizon about it?

 

[doogald]

I'm getting a new phone and I'm passing my Incredible to my wife and her Eris to my son. I was wondering if we could use the phone without 3G service so all we would pay is just the minutes for phone use.

He can hook up to the internet with Wi-fi at home or other places.

Has anyone done this or asked Verizon about it?

First of all, as far as I know, Verizon will not let you activate an Eris (or any device that they consider a smartphone) unless it has an unlimited data plan activated as well, so there is no way (that I know of, or at least that is legal) to use an Eris as a Verizon phone without a data plan.

If you want just a WiFi only device: Let me just start by saying that I have never done this myself, but my understanding is that it would be a lot easier if you root it while it is activated. Whenever you factory reset the Eris running the stock software, it will ask you to go through the activation step. While it's rooted you could just put it in airplane mode (to turn off the wireless CDMA radio), activate WiFi and use it as a WiFi-only device without any Verizon service (voice or data.)

Now, there are rumors that Verizon will be creating new data plans sometime soon, which will allow you to have family plan shared data plans in addition to shared voice plans. So you could then activate the phone with a shared family data plan, turn off the 3G radio and use it just for voice and SMS, as well as using WiFi for data. It would use data only for sending and receiving MMS messages at that point, which I think does not use your actual data plan allowance (the rumor about shared data plans also suggests that there will be no more unlimited data plans, and that there will be data caps of some sort.)

Anyway, that's what I know. Or think I know anyway...

 

[scary alien]

If you want just a WiFi only device: Let me just start by saying that I have never done this myself, but my understanding is that it would be a lot easier if you root it while it is activated. Whenever you factory reset the Eris running the stock software, it will ask you to go through the activation step. While it's rooted you could just put it in airplane mode (to turn off the wireless CDMA radio), activate WiFi and use it as a WiFi-only device without any Verizon service (voice or data.)

My Eris hasn't been activated since 7/15/2010, so I've been using it as a wi-fi device since them without issues.

When we were trying to capture the February OTA, I used eu1's special OTA-capture 2.1 Flashback ROM to revert to 2.1 stock. When I did the activation, I just told it I wanted to use wi-fi only. I didn't used to put my phone in airplane mode, but I finally started doing that when I was just using it in wi-fi mode.

I had no trouble rooting the phone with Z4root and eventually re-rooting the proper-way (flashing Amon_RA's custom recovery) and restoring my Nandroid backups with just wi-fi.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have a specific experiment that you'd like me to do (barring re-activating it, of course...my DX wouldn't like that ).

Cheers!

 

[grvthang]

Help!
I wanted to give my old (unrooted) Eris to my girlfriend to use, wi-fi only, as a web browser and music player. It worked fine for a couple of months until she asked me to remove my old personal info (gmail and facebook accounts) so that she could use hers.
I tried to remove my gmail account, and got a message saying I needed to reset it to factory defaults. I did that, and now the phone will not activate - I get up to a screen saying "Problem with activation" and can get no further. Now the device is useless.
Is there anything I can do?

 

[doogald]

Help!
I wanted to give my old (unrooted) Eris to my girlfriend to use, wi-fi only, as a web browser and music player. It worked fine for a couple of months until she asked me to remove my old personal info (gmail and facebook accounts) so that she could use hers.
I tried to remove my gmail account, and got a message saying I needed to reset it to factory defaults. I did that, and now the phone will not activate - I get up to a screen saying "Problem with activation" and can get no further. Now the device is useless.
Is there anything I can do?

Well, a few things that I can think of:

- activate it temporarily on your account. Let your girlfriend log in with her gmail account. Root the phone, install a ROM that will run WiFi only (any of them will be fine). Put the Eris in Airplane mode with WiFi enabled, and then call Verizon to reactivate your current phone on your plan.

- If you have the 1.46.0000 or 1.47.0000 bootloader version, you could root the phone old-school, using the PB00IMG.zip rooted image, get Amon_RA recovery on the phone, and then install a custom ROM. You can find out your bootloader version by shutting the Eris down and then restarting by holding VolDn - it should start in HBOOT and show the bootloader versions at the top of the display.

(I realize that to somebody who has never rooted, that last paragraph looks like Greek to somebody who cannot read Greek, but you can ask about all of this in our "All Things Root" subforum.)
Perhaps others can think of another method....

 

[doogald]

Wait... I just thought of another method that is worth a try.

It's from here: http://androidforums.com/eris-suppo...help-getting-pass-activation.html#post1991633

(Note that this will ask you to enter phone info, etc. So you may need to activate on your account temporarily anyway. Not sure.)

As many people notice tapping 4 corners on HTC eris doesnt work because the version of it is different from regular DROID but this is the only way you can bypass it.
STEP 1) press EMERGENCY CALL
STEP 2) DIAL ##778 (CALL)
STEP 3) PRESS EDIT MODE
STEP 4) ENTER PASSWORD WHICH IS: 000000
STEP 5) TAP NAM Settings
STEP 6) Enter Your 10 digit phone number press OK
STEP 7) TAP NAM 1 and enter you 7 digid cel phone number without area code
STEP 8) TAP NAM 2 enter your 3 digit area code
STEP 9) TAP back
STEP 10) TAP SID/NID settings and change the left box to: 40 leave the right box as it is(then tap ok)
STEP 11) TAP MENU
STEP 12) TAP COMMIT MOD.
AFTER STEP 12 the android eris will restart in 10 seconds and will bypass the main activation screen.
This is the manual configuation for HTC ERIS

I think I'd still recommend rooting the phone after this, to save on the hassle if you have to wipe data, plus to get a more reliable handset. But, that's up to you....

 

[grvthang]

Wait... I just thought of another method that is worth a try.

It's from here: http://androidforums.com/eris-suppo...help-getting-pass-activation.html#post1991633

(Note that this will ask you to enter phone info, etc. So you may need to activate on your account temporarily anyway. Not sure.)



I think I'd still recommend rooting the phone after this, to save on the hassle if you have to wipe data, plus to get a more reliable handset. But, that's up to you....

Thanks - I'll try it. And if I do get it going, I'll definitely root it.

 

[erisuser1]

Iirc, if you have a stock 2.1 Eris (not rooted) which has been "factory reset", you can get past the activation call by:

- go ahead and let it make the call, but hang up the call any time after the call starts ringing
- repeat the above 3 times (or 4, I can't remember exactly), hanging up each time

Activation will get skipped after a small number of tries, and you can configure a wifi setup,and even a Google account if you wish. The latter will allow you to download apps (e.g. for rooting purposes) so you don't need to sideload.

HTH

 

[grvthang]

Wait... I just thought of another method that is worth a try.

It's from here: http://androidforums.com/eris-suppo...help-getting-pass-activation.html#post1991633

(Note that this will ask you to enter phone info, etc. So you may need to activate on your account temporarily anyway. Not sure.)



I think I'd still recommend rooting the phone after this, to save on the hassle if you have to wipe data, plus to get a more reliable handset. But, that's up to you....

It worked! Thanks a million!

 

[wintkat]

Iirc, if you have a stock 2.1 Eris (not rooted) which has been "factory reset", you can get past the activation call by:

- go ahead and let it make the call, but hang up the call any time after the call starts ringing
- repeat the above 3 times (or 4, I can't remember exactly), hanging up each time

Activation will get skipped after a small number of tries, and you can configure a wifi setup,and even a Google account if you wish. The latter will allow you to download apps (e.g. for rooting purposes) so you don't need to sideload.

HTH

THANKS!!! this method worked for me

 

[soccerz619]

As many people notice tapping 4 corners on HTC eris doesnt work because the version of it is different from regular DROID but this is the only way you can bypass it.
STEP 1) press EMERGENCY CALL
STEP 2) DIAL ##778 (CALL)
STEP 3) PRESS EDIT MODE
STEP 4) ENTER PASSWORD WHICH IS: 000000
STEP 5) TAP NAM Settings
STEP 6) Enter Your 10 digit phone number press OK
STEP 7) TAP NAM 1 and enter you 7 digid cel phone number without area code
STEP 8) TAP NAM 2 enter your 3 digit area code
STEP 9) TAP back
STEP 10) TAP SID/NID settings and change the left box to: 40 leave the right box as it is(then tap ok)
STEP 11) TAP MENU
STEP 12) TAP COMMIT MOD.
AFTER STEP 12 the android eris will restart in 10 seconds and will bypass the main activation screen.
This is the manual configuation for HTC ERIS

That is what worked for me. Pulled from here: http://androidforums.com/eris-suppo...help-getting-pass-activation.html#post1991633

 

[doogald]

As many people notice tapping 4 corners on HTC eris doesnt work because the version of it is different from regular DROID but this is the only way you can bypass it.

There is another way - have it start the activation call and then disconnect the call. It will try about three times; after that it will give up and allow you to proceed through the setup.