I didn't know that, and it does sound a bit poor -- you'd think there'd be some sort of "phone-only" mode. Perhaps SMS is the problem; I've no idea whether the air protocols let a handset decline (defer) SMS while still taking voice calls, which would be the ideal.

But I'd happily put up with full airplane mode -- or for that matter car-player-esque locked-out "synchronising" mode -- if it got me mass storage. The user-story, which had happened to me shortly before writing that post, is this: I'd realised, just before heading off to lunch with Dave, that there was a photo on my PC that I wanted to show him (an osage-orange fruit in the Botanic Gardens that I'd snapped the previous day). I further realised that an Iphone, with a nice colour screen and the zoomy inny outy stuff, would be a good way of showing it. But gphoto2 seemed unable to send the photo to the Iphone over MTP ("operation not supported"); transferring the photo to the only PC with Itunes on (which is the laptop, outside the firewall), only to wrestle with the Itunes UI to work out how to send a photo, didn't seem appealing; and though t'internet alleged it was possible to store photos without Itunes, it seemed like a big hassle.

I could've had the photo onto the Vibez in seconds, and would've except of course the screen is about one squillionth the size. So (to the best of my knowledge) Dave still doesn't know what an osage-orange fruit looks like.

Peter