Unable to deactivate 'Airplane mode'

[innernet]

Hi all.
Obtained a new ‘smart’ telephone and a Notebook application in the old phone, holding a lot of text did not transfer to the new phone by the service provider experts doing their massaging.

Plugged the now-no-SIM old phone to my laptop via USB cable with the intention of transfer at least copying texts and cannot see the phone recognizing the laptop.
The laptop equally does not recognize the old phone being plugged in USB.

Decided to try wifi or bluetooth to transfer DIRECTLY files from the old phone to the laptop (There is no router at my place) and does not allow to activate WiFi/Bluetooth because ‘Airplane mode is on’

Unable to turn it off as wireless/ selections show greyed-out or not obeying on The laptop. Clicking ‘turn off Airplane mode’ does nothing.
Turned off the wired ethernet connection and did turn off; but still no way to get out of the ‘Airplane mode’
Please guide me in baby steps as for an ignorant unskilled beginner.

-Running Ubuntu 24.04-

[1fallen]

can you try this first please:

nmcli r wifi on

Any better?

[innernet]

Nope…
The hardware keyboard command for WiFi (Fn F5 key does nothing either)

[1fallen]

Interesting, can you show us this

rfkill list all

[innernet]

[1fallen]

You have a hardware block, possibly missing needed drivers.
Have you looked into ;

sudo ubuntu-drivers install   

[innernet]

(post deleted by author)

[innernet]

[1fallen]

Is your phone still connected to your computer? If so un-plug it.

Also to help rule out a bad card, Please use the Live Installer to check if your WiFi works.

[Jeremy31]

There should be a small switch on the side that will toggle the hard block

[popey]

Indeed, it looks like this: