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How do I backup and restore SMS Messages?

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5 Answers

up vote 17 down vote accepted

I recommend Life Saver 2 by Tim Bray. It saves and restores not only SMS, but also your phone call history:

LifeSaver helps you move Phone & SMS history from one Android device to another. Your phone call log and SMS messages are your life’s history! You shouldn’t lose them just because you get a new phone. LifeSaver2 (which replaces the old “LifeSaver”) is here to help.

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Thank you, very simple and efficient app. – Drake Oct 29 '10 at 10:17
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LifeSaver 2 is a unpolished. E.g. the status of the upload/download is only shown in the Android pulldown curtain, not in the app itself. And either it does not restore at my phone, or the status in the curtain is just not updated. It keeps saying "Restored 0/441 calls (...)". – Thomas Wessel Oct 20 '12 at 13:30
Furthermore it only saves your restored data for 1-2 hours, for privacy/security reasons. The intention is good, but what happens if you start factory resetting the phone and smth goes awfully wrong, so the phone is not ready to restore the data within those two hours? The data is lost. – Thomas Wessel Oct 20 '12 at 13:32
If pressing "Save your life" several times, each message will appear many times in the appspot storage. I'm not sure if each of these are restored too, of if it weeds out duplicates then. – Thomas Wessel Oct 20 '12 at 13:47
up vote 14 down vote

You can use SMS Backup & Restore to export to an XML file:

Schedule automatic backups or backup your messages anytime you wish. You can view backup contents on your phone, and choose to backup selected conversations only.

Backups are created in XML format and saved to your device's SD card.

The XML can then be converted to other formats, and can also be viewed on a computer.

It's easy to e-mail your backup files anywhere you wish.

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SMS Backup+ also supports other IMAP servers – David Fraser Jul 20 '11 at 9:48
thumps up for back up in XML format – kitokid Oct 20 '12 at 2:59
up vote 21 down vote

I highly recommend SMS backup or its forked version: SMS backup+. It'll back up your SMS to a Gmail Label:

Automatically backup SMS, MMS and call log entries using a separate label in Gmail / Google Calendar. It is also possible to restore SMS and call log entries back to the phone (MMS not supported yet).

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The forked version is in active development (original has had no changes since early 2010), and also supports backing up to any IMAP server – David Fraser Jul 20 '11 at 9:47
Very slow. I'm on a HSDPA connection, capable of youtube, skype etc. Still when restoring my sms'es it took about a second per piece, for each of my 2900 texts. – Thomas Wessel Oct 20 '12 at 22:37
up vote 2 down vote

Wondershare MobileGo for Android is a good alternative. You can perform basic tasks as syncronizacion, backup, restore SMS, contacts, etc.. The only limitation is that only available for computers running Windows. More details regarding this solution from this site, though it is in Spanish.

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up vote 2 down vote

Take a look at smslemon.com. This is android application which lets you doing backup. You have access to your sms by the browser. In the easy way you can manage messages (by the browser) and all your changes will be synchronized with the phone.

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