@dowodenum If you have a SIM card in your phone, it pings the carrier with your IMEI and location at the sub ROM level, so airplane mode doesn't matter. It is unknown if it is pinging anything without the SIM, but it might or might not. Not the carrier at least.

@dowodenum It is still possible to make 911 calls with no SIM, so the phone is still pinging for towers. It is unclear, to me at least in my research, whether your IMEI and location are being sent anywhere and stored.

@msdosfx
https://superuser.com/a/602128

Could have changed since 2013, but I've verified this phone with an electrosmog meter

@msdosfx
Unless the pings are so short they won't register on the LEDs or speaker

@dowodenum I'm guessing both of us are less trackable than the vast hoards, but that could definitely make us more targeted for tracking. Anyway, there have been legal cases around car accidents where the phone carrier was subpoenaed to see if the driver was texting. It turns out the phone, not the owner, was texting its location and IMEI to the carrier at regular intervals. This was shown to be happening beneath the operating system. So turning something off in the OS is not a guarantee.