Help disabling phone APKs on 7" Capacitative for NewB

[Whitebeam]

Sorry, but please could someone please walk me through how to disable the battery-eating phone APKs on my new 7" capacitative Scroll? I'm terrified of screwing something up, but I hate seeing how much battery the rump phone system is chewing through. Why oh why haven't SO disabled this during production? I'm also rather confused about some of the instructions on here as some seem to say that this-or-that root routine works and other posts say that it doesn't - are these differences due to the different variants of Scroll out there?

I'm computer literate but not yet Android literate

Here's what I understand I need to do, and the concerns I have about each step:

1) Run some app to grant me root access (see comment below about ADB). I'd like this to be temporary rather than permanent if possible as I currently don't see any further use to me for access at this level (also, see the comment above about screwing things up I see Z4Root mentioned as working in some places and not in others. Can someone tell me a sure-fire method for the 7" Capacitative? I quote my system details below.

2) Rename Phone.apk to Phone.old, reboot, rename Mms.apk and TelephonyProvider.apk to *.old and reboot. Ok, what file manager do I need to do this? I currently have ES File Explorer installed - will this do the job if I have done the root access step above correctly, or do I need some other tool?

Is there a way to do stage 2 via the Android SDK and ADB over the USB debugging link? This would mean that I don't need to go near stage 1 which I guess is what's scaring me

Sorry for asking questions that I'm sure you feel that you've already answered elsewhere, but I've spent some time setting the system up as I want it and don't want to now spend more time faffing about and end up having to set it all up again from scratch.

Model number is SCR042577, Android version 2.3.1, Baseband version 1.02

Peter

[Whitebeam]

As you were - I've worked out how to do it myself using the SDK/ADB route and by amalgamating several posts on here. For those that follow, here's what I did:

On Windows 7:

1) Download and install the SDK from http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html.

2) In SDK Manager, Install the USB drivers from Available packages/Third party Add-ons/Google Inc.

3) On the PC, edit the android_winusb.inf file in Program Files/Android/android-sdk/extras/google/usb_driver and add:

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; Scroll - recovery
%SingleAdbInterface%        = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED
%CompositeAdbInterface%     = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_DEED&MI_01
;
; Scroll - bootloader (fastboot)
%SingleBootLoaderInterface% = USB_Install, USB\VID_18D1&PID_D00D
;

after [Google.NTx86] and again after [Google.NTamd64] (yes, I know only one of these is necessary depending on your Windows architecture - I'm just covering the bases here).

4) Edit the PATH environment variable to include the location of adb.exe.

5) Plug in the Scroll USB lead with USB debugging enabled on the Scroll.

6) From a Windows command prompt type

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adb devices
adb shell

You should now have a # root prompt in your Windows command window

7) At the # prompt type:

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mount -o rw,remount -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock2 /system

to make the system directory structure writable and then type:

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mv /system/app/Phone.apk /system/app/Phone.old

8) Reboot your scroll.

9) Repeat Stage 6 above.

10) At the # prompt type:

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mv /system/app/Mms.apk /system/app/Mms.old
mv /system/app/TelephonyProvider.apk /system/app/TelephonyProvider.old
ls -la /system/app/*.old

You should see something similar to:

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-rw-r--r-- root     root       885995 2011-04-28 15:12 Mms.old
-rw-r--r-- root     root      1672701 2011-04-28 15:12 Phone.old
-rw-r--r-- root     root        57880 2011-04-28 15:12 TelephonyProvider.old

Job done. Reboot your Scroll and your battery drain should now be a fraction of its former self.

Hope there aren't too many typos in the above. Please point them out where they exist.

My thanks to all of those whose work I have plagarised in putting together this method.

Peter