[Hero CDMA Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] hfelton:
ok - i typed in the title, read the other threads (diff. phones a/o diff. countries) and i think i approximately understand the issues involved...

given: i lost my hero a few months ago (knew it was somewhere, but after a couple days i went to sprint and asked what-to-do... they said i -could- replace it and if it was 'found' then itd be "blocked"...)

1 - i filed a claim as lost (had TEP so paid $100 and got a new/refurb phone real quick) and then went ahead and started 'using' the new one...

2 - didnt worry about anything (no fraud, alls cool)

3 - two or three months later, i find my old 'lost' phone... (crap - now what?) i eventually plug it in and charge it up and when i turn it on i immediately turn off all the radios (afaict) by putting it into airplane-mode...

4 - now, with this old phone i had root and custom-stuff - and notably some details that did not get stored in my google-contacts correctly (birthdays?)...

5 - i grabbed what i needed off the phone and now have a presumably-perfectly-good-piece-o-junk sitting here not doing anything...

ive done some reading and some googling and have figured out that 'the man' can track my phone using the meid or somesuch - and im not particularly interested in using it as a phone anyways since i already have the exact same phone working just fine...

im not interested in being charged for fraud - and/or selling the old phone to maybe some other country or whatnot... basically i am just interested in 'tinkering' with the phone and using it for whatever it might be good for...

so, like a 'totalled-car' - i want to futz around by trying new roms and maybe leaving it as a music-player or bar-code-scanner or gps-system in the car...

now, the question: what can i 'turn on' without getting into trouble ?

in particular, since nothing has been on since i powered it up - it says something really bizarre like yr-1928 or something... i just want to get a signal that will reset the clock and allow my to turn some stuff (like gps) on - without getting into trouble... heck, if i could just turn on the phone (and NOT make calls - since when i checked, it is still locked into my phone-# and acct) but to have it as an emergency-911 system in the car - thatd be great too...

when i switched-carriers a decade ago (and bought a new phone), i kept my old nokia around and used it as an alarm-clock cuz i preferred the beeping it made and did not want to 'use up' the battery on my new phone (treo 600)... i also knew that it was not 'dead' and so if i needed to make an emergency 911 call - that itd work... technically, ive still got it (and several other old phones that ive upgraded thru the years) - and most of them would still serve similar purposes...

but this is the first time ive 'worried' about turning on a phone... should i be ? can i just turn on gps ? or maybe only wifi ? or will anything that i do with this thing cause my phone to 'register'... maybe i should just call the insurance-folks and return it... i guess i could do some -playing- with my older treos, but this hero was my first android-device and im not some rich-kid that gets a new phone every 3 months to 'play with'...

any suggestions/info about what it is 'ok' to do with this lost-then-re-found android-phone would be welcomed... and thanx for reading this wall-o-text... i can be babbly... :D