How to bypass moto e activation screen

I bought two droid bionics on ebay after being told on another forum that I could bypass the activation without a sim card. I only want to use the phones over wifi with no service. I received the phones today for a birthday 3 days away and when I power them up there is no android screen. The first screen is language selection, then when you hit "Start" the second screen says "a sim card is needed to operate this phone" with two buttons "Emergency call" and "Power off". I tried the 4 corner trick on both screens, but it didn't work. It took me a while to do the 4 corners on a Droid X and a Droid 2 so maybe I'm just not hitting it in the right spot, but it appears to not work.

Can someone please confirm that the 4 corner trick works on the "a sim card is needed to operate this phone" screen with no android guy? Also could someone please tell me how to use these phones on wifi only if the 4 corner trick doesn't work? What's my next step? Borrow someone's sim card and try the bypass trick?

The phones are running 4.1.x

Try this and see if it still works...

Power on phone holding volume down, when you see fast boot keep taping volume down till you see "Boot Android {No BP}" and press volume up.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]It will boot you into Google Setup....just click the green guy then select the "skip" option for the rest of the setup. When you get to the location service consent section with the 3 options just don't select any and you will boot to the regular home screen with no service.[/FONT]

Try this and see if it still works...

Power on phone holding volume down, when you see fast boot keep taping volume down till you see "Boot Android {No BP}" and press volume up.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Geneva, sans-serif]It will boot you into Google Setup....just click the green guy then select the "skip" option for the rest of the setup. When you get to the location service consent section with the 3 options just don't select any and you will boot to the regular home screen with no service.[/FONT]

I have a Bionic also that i factory reset when i got a new phone. I later wanted to use it as a WiFi only music player. I was told by a Verizon rep that 4G phones must have a SIM card in to do what you are trying to do. I never looked into it further... but that's what I was told.

Sent from my XT907 using Tapatalk

The four corner trick should work, it worked fine on my Droid 4 though it required a number of tries to get it. Just on the first screen just cycle top left to top right then down and around over and over until it works.

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

this may not be of help, but every time i get a new phone, i make them give me a new sim and i keep the old one just for the problem you are having.
when you get a new sim, the old one is automatically burned. but it still has your account info on it, so it will activate the phone as usual, you just have no call/cell service except emergency.
you could see if a friend would get a new sim and give you the old one, if you cant do it yourself.

Oh yeah...do it on the first screen, don't select anything just start the four corner taps as soon as it boots and shows the "select language" screen or whatever the first screen is...

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

Oh yeah...do it on the first screen, don't select anything just start the four corner taps as soon as it boots and shows the "select language" screen or whatever the first screen is...

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk

I was hoping the phones would get 1x service for network time/location and system updates, but I guess that doesn't work at all without a sim card. So that begs the question, if I buy a blank sim off ebay/amazon will that give me basic network time/location info?

You can get system and app updates over WiFi and my WiFi provides time/date as well. I still have all my old droids (droid, droid 2, droid 3 and droid 4) and they all keep current time and date with just WiFi connectivity.

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