Clean install iPhone 4S with only keeping all my text messages (battery issue)

[Jens Engels]

Hey

I was wondering, i want to do a clean install of my new iPhone 4S (ios 5.0.1) as i have a little battery drainage problem and want to do a fresh install (first time in 4 years), but the only thing i do not want to lose is all my text messages that i send and received during the last 4 years.

How can i do this without doing any kind of jailbreaking?

Thank you very much!!
Jens

 

[jpetticrew]

Hey

I was wondering, i want to do a clean install of my new iPhone 4S (ios 5.0.1) as i have a little battery drainage problem and want to do a fresh install (first time in 4 years), but the only thing i do not want to lose is all my text messages that i send and received during the last 4 years.

How can i do this without doing any kind of jailbreaking?

Thank you very much!!
Jens

In short: you can't.

 

[Kyotoma]

You might be able to use iexplorer to at least save all of your text messages from the last four years. Putting them back onto the device I'm not sure of.

 

[Applejuiced]

Nope.

 

[SweetLou122]

no easy way to do it, don't know why

 

[Jens Engels]

damnn that's too bad ! hope apple puts this option in a future update or something..

 

[tardman91]

Who the heck saves 4 years worth of text messages? That's crazy. I clear mine out every few days.

 

[Jens Engels]

Some conversations are funny to have a look back at later, and there are some people that i care about, and sometimes, i look back on text messages, too remember things that i totally forgot already. it's like pictures in some way !

 

[Crystal-RX]

Some conversations are funny to have a look back at later, and there are some people that i care about, and sometimes, i look back on text messages, too remember things that i totally forgot already. it's like pictures in some way !

That put Herman Cain into trouble as well because people keeping texts for every and these come back to bite them later on

 

[dehory]

This is a belated response, but I'm not sure why people kept telling the OP it wasn't possible when there are posts like this one.

 

[Applejuiced]

This is a belated response, but I'm not sure why people kept telling the OP it wasn't possible when there are posts like this one.

Because that method above still restores it from backup.
If you read his post he asks how to do a clean install and setup as new.

 

[dehory]

Because that method above still restores it from backup.
If you read his post he asks how to do a clean install and setup as new.

See the method I linked to:

6. Set up the phone you want to transfer texts to as a new phone
7. make a new backup after it is set up
8. go to the folder with the new backup created in step 7, delete everything in it leaving an empty folder
9. Copy the 6 files listed in step 5 to the empty folder from step 8
10. right click the phone in iTunes and restore to backup
11. You should have a fresh phone, set up new but with all of your texts saved

Assuming those instructions work in iOS 5 like they apparently did in iOS 4, the result is a clean new install with texts retained from the old backup.