Once you plug it into a phone and power it on, the IMEI number of the phone and the SIM's serial number will be transmitted to the nearest cell tower(s). source
Is there a way to spoof the location of a SIM/IMEI that is connected to a smartphone?
I remember a few years ago I played with XPrivacy (XPosed) but I saw another post at Reddit that says that Magisk and Xposed are the opposite of security. source
You cannot spoof the location using the phone since the location is not determined by the phone itself. Instead the phone connects and authenticates against the cell tower(s) and any location is determined based on which cell towers it is connected to. Since one can only connect to nearby cell towers one cannot spoof the location by connecting to far away cell towers.
Ignoring GPS, which you would have turned off, phone location is estimated from tower data. Under common conditions that location precision is on the order of a quarter mile where three cell towers typically see your signal. This can vary wildly with far greater precision in a dense area with micro cells to much worse precision out in the boondocks where only a single tower sees your signal.
It is possible to fudge if not spoof your location by using a high gain directional antenna in the right conditions to have your phone connect with a cell tower much farther away than normal. In theory, time-of-flight measurements could measure the delay and compute your actual greater range. In practice, other than a few proof-of-concept deployments, I don't believe this capability was ever implemented on a large scale.
