Verizon iPhone in Europe

[Emplusten]

I have a 5s running 7.1. I have a Verizon plan.
I am currently in Sweden for about a week and I am planning on using the iPhone in a wifi only capacity. I have turned off cellular voice and data. I connect to wifi and that is working fine. However, I keep getting the "searching" icon in the upper left next to wifi icon. My battery life is a day.

My questions are
1. What is the phone "searching" for? Is it other wifi networks or is it cellular?(even though I have cellular turned off?)

2. Is the short battery life due to the wifi even though the phone is not used most of the day? Or is it because of the "searching" causing a power drain.

3. I thought I turned off all updates and services during my debug of the above. Could I have missed something?

Thanks,
Emp

 

[Applejuiced]

Just turn on airplane mode and then turn on wifi.
It will stop searching for a carrier to connect and stop killing your battery.

 

[Emplusten]

Well, that was easy and appears to work. Thanks!

I guess the reason I didn't try that before is I thought airplane mode disabled all wireless, not just cellular.

 

[Applejuiced]

Cool, glad it worked out

 

[C DM]

Well, that was easy and appears to work. Thanks!

I guess the reason I didn't try that before is I thought airplane mode disabled all wireless, not just cellular.

It does, but at least you can separately turn some of them on like WiFi and Bluetooth.