Android tricks: Disable “No SIM card” screen

By Radu Motisan Posted on September 9th, 2009 , 1597 Views (Rate 1.16)

After doing a firmware upgrade I got the "NO Sim card" screen again. I can't imagine what was in the head of the person who decided the implementation of this screen, since it is annoying as much as useless.

However there are ways of disabling it.

First disable the "No sim screen":
-connect the Android to your PC, making sure you have ADB (part of Google Android SDK)
-open a console and type:
# $ adb shell
# $ su
# $ cd /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases
# $ sqlite3 settings.db
# INSERT INTO system (name, value) VALUES ('device_provisioned', 1);
# .exit
# $ reboot

After the reboot the "no sim" screen should be gone, but you need to activate the phone using a gmail address, and you don't have internet access.

To enable WLAN do the following, in the same system console, using ADB again:
# adb shell
# am start -a android.intent.action.MAIN -n com.android.settings/.Settings
Setup your WLAN connection and use the internet access to complete the GMAIL Account part.

Hope it helps.

Radu Motisan

Jack Kirby:
October 26th, 2010 at 7:10 pm

Google have been criticised again for collecting emails, passwords, personal details from open wifi setups while they were collecting for Street View. That was straight-up wrong of them and it’s getting harder to understand what they mean now by ‘do no evil’…