If you're going to keep airplane mode on 100% of the time, why would you have a device with a cellular modem? If you're going to turn airplane mode off, your backdoor is open. It's just a thing we have to accept for now if we want to have phones. 

Someday we'll have better hardware.  

 Unfortunately our smart phones nearly always have gsm modules

wish it were possible to have a pocket sized android without the cellular tracking.

pixel tablet, if it were smaller, for instance.