UITableViewCell: How to prevent blue selection background w/o borking isSelected property?

You must also override setHighlighted: to prevent the blue gradient from ever showing. If you just override setHighlighted: then you end up with a momentary selection effect.

so you’ll have these two methods:

- (void)setHighlighted: (BOOL)highlighted animated: (BOOL)animated
{
    // don't highlight
}

- (void)setSelected: (BOOL)selected animated: (BOOL)animated 
{
    // don't select
    //[super setSelected:selected animated:animated];
}