Permission is only granted to system app, in Manifest
MODIFY_PHONE_STATE
permission is granted to system apps only.
For your information, there are 2 types of Android apps: system & user
User apps are just all your normal app installations through the Google Play Store, Amazon Appstore or sideloading. These go into the /data partition of your Android phone, which is the part of the internal memory made available for user data and apps.
System apps are basically the apps that come pre-installed with your ROM. In a standard Android user environment, the user doesn’t have write access to the /system partition and thus, installing or uninstalling system apps directly isn’t possible.
In order to install an app as a system app on your Android device, your device must either be rooted or have a custom recovery installed (or both).
That being said, that error is actually wrong because you have a valid code and compilation should work. It would be better if it gave a warning instead. In Eclipse you can easily fix it. Just go to:
Window -> Preferences -> Android -> Lint Error Checking.
Find ProtectedPermission
from the list and set the severity to something other than error(info for example). This way your project will still compile.
MODIFY_PHONE_STATE
is a system-only permission. System Apps are either pre-installed into a system folder or compiled by a manufacturer using their security certificate.
Hence, if you are trying to do this you are trying to use API which are no longer supported. With Android versions 2.3+ you can monitor incoming calls, but blocking is not allowed (i think from the link you posted thats what you're trying to do).
Android issues if you need to follow: Issue 15022 and Issue 14789
This error appears in SDK 19 onwards, when you change the manifest. Do Project Clean and Build. It should clear this error.