Inreach deactivation/Iridium disabling

I don't think you can fully disable Iridium communication as the device will always check for messages on startup and periodically (I believe once each hour) even if you do not initiatie communication yourself.

Curious though as to why you want to temporarily disable communication?

Iridium transmitter inside 67i drains around 1W of energy during transmission. In a case of some ordinary hiking in a range of cellular coverage this option can save a lot of power. But it seems that there is no such option

No it can’t be turned off. In an emergency having it off could be a real problem, now you have to quickly turn it back on, let’s say you’re  in a bear attack situation and now you try to send a help message and it doesn’t work and finally you remember oh satellite transmission is turned off and now you have to frantically turn it on and resend your message or if someone else goes to use the emergency messaging feature for your benefit and it doesn’t  work, that’s going to be a bad situation. I’ve left mine on for hours inside my house without any appreciable battery drain, but it’s still able to get a signal through my old structure. But your not supposed to use it inside either.

Hello, the only way to 'disable' service would be to either suspend or cancel service. Suspending an inReach Subscription Service Plan  //  Canceling an inReach Subscription Service Plan. 

Am I understanding right that even if service will be suspended or canceled Iridium transceiver inside navigator will be powered on and will try to connect to satellites every hour and during power-up? 

I apologize for dredging up an old thread but I have a question about this topic. I thought I read that choosing “Skip” for the Iridium connection during startup would leave IR off for the duration of the session - not so?  I’m asking because I plan to sometimes still use my InReach Mini2 for sat Communication, rather than the 67i.   That would be for trips where there is a summit push, and I only want to carry the little Mini2 on the last leg.  Could someone clarify whether this is possible on the 67I or not?

No. The "skip" only appears on a device with NO active subscription. When you choose to skip, what you are doing is skipping the activation step (thereby keeping the device inactivated). it IS true that there won't be any iR activity - but that's not the point of the prompt.

Thanks for the clarification!  Meanwhile, I'm having difficulty activating my new  (but bought used) 67i.  Oddly, at least one of the Garmin tutorials says to activate inReach using the Explore website, but there it says that the 67 series must be activated using the Messenger app.  Then, attempting to do it on the Messenger app directs you back to the web to enter the IMEI and Authorization values.  Unfortunately, after doing that, I get an error message saying "Unable to Activate" due to invalid unit #s.  I sent in a customer service request but haven't heard back yet.

I find it VERY frustrating that a lot of Garmin instructions (manuals, old tutorials, FAQs, auto-responses, etc) have conflicting information.  As things are updated or changed the old online content and help files need to be reviewed and deleted or amended as necessary.