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Back Up Text Messages

B

bob616

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 12, 2008
277
0
I need to back up some text messages on my phone because I am going to the Apple store to get my phone replaced. I want to start my new iPhone on a fresh clean firmware but there are some important text messages that I would like to keep. All of the programs I have found online don't work for the latest firmware.
So are there any that work on the newest firmware? I have a mac and a windows machine so it doesn't matter what the program is for.

Thanks in advance
 
Nothing just for texts.
You either have it all or nothing.
Restore from backup thru itunes and get every single thing recovered or start clean and you're basicly really clean and left with only stuff you can sync back thru itunes:)
 
Applejuiced said:
Nothing just for texts.
You either have it all or nothing.
Restore from backup thru itunes and get every single thing recovered or start clean and you're basicly really clean and left with only stuff you can sync back thru itunes:)
Click to expand...

So there is nothing to back up to your computer?
 
Applejuiced said:
Nope, just the backup that itunes creates when you sync it.
Click to expand...

Ok thank you. I hope that one day they have a selective backup.
Does backing up your phone slow it down at all. I remember reading stories about people who's phones glitches up after restoring from a backup
 
bob616 said:
Ok thank you. I hope that one day they have a selective backup.
Does backing up your phone slow it down at all. I remember reading stories about people who's phones glitches up after restoring from a backup
Click to expand...

I hear you. A selective backup system would be nice.
Some that have issues with their iphones say some bugs carry over to the new phone when restored from backup. I never had any probs and I been restoring from backup for about 3 years now.
But it is alot cleaner to start fresh with nothing and just sync the stuff you need thru itunes.
 
Phone view! Google it. It's a brillaint file manager for your iPhone. Please please support the dev and buy it! I'm not related but hope for our of this software that's saved my bacon a few times
 
bob616 said:
Ok thank you. I hope that one day they have a selective backup.
Does backing up your phone slow it down at all. I remember reading stories about people who's phones glitches up after restoring from a backup
Click to expand...

Not restoring from a backup is good every now and then but not necessary every time you restore. When I first installed 3.0 I restored from a back up and it was sluggish so I restored again and started fresh and I could definitely tell a difference. But couldn't you just forward the text to an email (or even take a screen shot of the text), then after you restore send them back to your phone through email? And if you took a screenshot of the text you could just look at the screenshot and then type it into an email then send it to your phone. (you can send text through email, just send a message to 10digitnumber@txt.att.net or for a mms 10digitnumber@mms.att.net)
 
musio said:
Phone view! Google it. It's a brillaint file manager for your iPhone. Please please support the dev and buy it! I'm not related but hope for our of this software that's saved my bacon a few times
Click to expand...

Yeah I can second that. Phoneview is a very good program. Definitely recommend it.
 
Applejuiced said:
Thats for JB iphones only.
This utility might work with extracting your SMS messages from your itunes backup and it could save them on your computer but not put them back to the new iphone.
http://www.reincubate.com/labs/ipho...up-windows/#/res/i/labs/iphonebe/3_wizard.png
Also this could do it:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=4974
Click to expand...

I didn't see anything in the post that refers to jailbreaking. After all, the files you're messing with reside on the computer and not the phone. The ~/Library/Applications Support/MobileSync/Backup is where OSX keeps iPhone backups.
 
If you jailbreak you can use iphone browser to back up the sms.db file and then restore it to your new phone, which you would have to jailbreak to restore to, but after you backed it up you could un-jailbreak.
 
outphase said:
I didn't see anything in the post that refers to jailbreaking. After all, the files you're messing with reside on the computer and not the phone. The ~/Library/Applications Support/MobileSync/Backup is where OSX keeps iPhone backups.
Click to expand...

No, you don't need to be jailbroke to look at the backup, but the OP wanted to be able to get the SMS back on the new phone, which would require jailbreaking.

KingHuds said:
If you jailbreak you can use iphone browser to back up the sms.db file and then restore it to your new phone, which you would have to jailbreak to restore to, but after you backed it up you could un-jailbreak.
Click to expand...

I've never actually copied the sms.db file back to the iPhone, but this seems like it would work in theory, unless there's some other file needed for the iPhone to read the db file (maybe a plist?).
 
-aggie- said:
I've never actually copied the sms.db file back to the iPhone, but this seems like it would work in theory, unless there's some other file needed for the iPhone to read the db file (maybe a plist?).
Click to expand...

The phone automatically has the sms.db setup, just replace it with the one you've already saved and it will work like a charm, I've even done this using an sms.db from other phones, i.e. from a 2G to a 3GS and it works fine.
 
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