2) Most smartphones have GPS-based location services that use, well GPS, plus the combination of WiFi networks and their signal strengths. To get reasonable speed, this data needs to be cached locally, but only the data for where you've actually been can fit. This is the reason for the huge fallout a couple years ago about "Your iPhone is tracking your movements!" This cache can be read with physical access (and the device's PIN).
3) Yes, turning off the phone will do that. Unless you are a specific target, in which case law enforcement may have issued a software update just for you that makes the phone only appear to shut down. The only way to be sure is to take out the battery or not takke te phone with you.
Could be fun if it went viral. Could even have pictures of your favourite politician on the lid, Theresa May for the UK model I imagine.
If it became normal to put your phone in a Faraday cage while not making a call, no one would answer calls, and there would be no point in making them :).
Seriously: observation on my daily commute suggests that actually making phone calls is a minority use of the mobiles that people spend all the journey stroking and looking at.
How does the 'tracking' of the movements and location of a cellphone by the cellphone towers and/or WiFi networks work?
Or, The tracking by the towers works all the time so that the cellphone network will know how to send an incoming call to the phone? If so, is there a way to turn off the phone so that it can't receive calls and can't be tracked, noticed, or followed by the towers?