Android Read recent SMS messages from command line

Question

I have recently broken my Android's screen. (Again)

Its a T-Mobile G2

Trying to keep up with my busy technology related life is hard enough without losing my link with everyone.

I have rooted the phone and have the USB Debugging already turned on.

Does anyone know how I would check my recent SMS Messaged from the adb shell so I can keep up with work while i save up to get a new phone or a replacement screen.

Thanks for anyone that has any information regarding this.

EDIT

Response to eldarerathis

C:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell
$ cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
$ sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3: permission denied
$

cant chmod the file. do you know actually where it is ?

$ chmod +x sqlite3
chmod +x sqlite3
Bad mode
$

su leaves me with only basic commands

$ su
su
# cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
# sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3: not found
#

Corrected

sqlite was not installed

C:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell
$ cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
$ sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3 mmssms.db
SQLite version 3.6.22
Enter ".help" for instructions
sqlite>

Also to Access the database I needed to be root.

C:\android-sdk\platform-tools>adb shell
$ su
# cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
cd /data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases
# sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3 mmssms.db
SQLite version 3.6.22
Enter ".help" for instructions
sqlite>

Thanks a lot eldarerathis

This Link Helped

Answer 1

This is really ugly, but you can read them from the command line by using sqlite3 to view the database entries. You'll probably need to dig up a binary for this unless you have a custom ROM installed. There are some instructions for installing said binary in this Stack Overflow question, and SuperOneClick comes packaged with it (a copy of the binary itself can be found here).

If you do need to install the binary, use mount (with no parameters) to determine where your /system partition is physically located (mine is /dev/block/mtdblock3, for example). Then follow the instructions in the first link above, and start by remounting it in read/write mode with the command:

mount -o rw,remount /your/system/partition /system

Once you have sqlite3 you'll want to open an adb shell, switch to root with su, and then do the following:

# cd /data/data
cd /data/data
# cd com.android.providers.telephony/databases ***
cd com.android.providers.telephony/databases
# sqlite3 mmssms.db
sqlite3 mmssms.db
SQLite version 3.7.2
Enter ".help" for instructions
Enter SQL statements terminated with a ";"
sqlite> SELECT * FROM sms WHERE read=0;

This will pull up all of the rows from the table for all of the unread messages. The columns in the table are defined thusly (so you can trim the SELECT):

CREATE TABLE sms (_id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,thread_id INTEGER,address TEXT,
  person INTEGER,date INTEGER,protocol INTEGER,read INTEGER DEFAULT 0,
  status INTEGER DEFAULT -1,type INTEGER,reply_path_present INTEGER,
  subject TEXT,body TEXT,service_center TEXT,locked INTEGER DEFAULT 0,
  error_code INTEGER DEFAULT 0,seen INTEGER DEFAULT 0);

***Note for the marked line: this may be slightly different depending on your device and version of Android which is why I have included this cd command separately. I think it used to be com.android.providers/telephony/databases on older devices but I don't quite remember. Use ls to look around for the proper pathing here.

---

Alternatively, you could try copying the .db file onto your SD card (or pulling it with adb pull) and then reading it on your computer with sqlite.

Answer 2

Thanks to the beautiful hint above from eldarerathis, I just do

DB=/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db
echo 'select address,body from sms;' | ./sqlite3 -csv $DB 

to read my SMSes from my root prompt.

Since I didn't have sqlite3, I first had to download it with

curl http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16958605/sqlite3
chmod a+x sqlite3

Or see SQLite3 installer on Google Play (if you don't trust the dropbox source).

Answer 3

In case you're interested in more details than just sender and message (as in this answer), I've just found a nice article on the topic: Read SMS directly from Sqlite database in Android. Also see: The message data structure.

Even better, take a look at Github: ANDROID-SMS is a tool written in Python which recovers all SMS messages and organizes them into SMS Conversations with statistics provided. It also recovers all MMS messages and organizes them into MMS Conversations, with the respective files. I've not tried it (yet) myself (just found it a few minutes ago), but it sounds pretty neat.

Of course, this program doesn't work on the Android device directly – but instead on your computer (where it requires Python 2.7 with SQLite3 for Python). So you will need to first pull the database from the device. All required steps are described on the project's Github main page.

Answer 4

Another solution I invented utilizes an app on the phone that reacts on SMS and saves it to a file that you can read with ADB.

• Install any Tasker-like app, I made it with E-Robot
• Create new command
• Add event Contact=>SMS
• Add action Memory=>Write file, there you can save SMS to a new file every time or to the same one with separator. Anyway save it to /sdcard or any path accessible via ADB.
• Monitor that path with ADB and read SMS contents.