Dave Hope has created a neat utility to convert SMS Messages from Blackberry devices into a format that can be used to import them into any Android phone using my app SMS Backup & Restore.
This utility/tool can be downloaded from his site Hope.mx. Thanks to Dave for this utility 
This process works WITHOUT needing root access on the Android phone.
A couple of users of my SMS Backup & Restore app reported that they were not able to see the backup folder (and files) created by the app when using a Galaxy Nexus on Windows 7. For the uninitiated, Galaxy Nexus is a bit different from most other Android phones, it does not have an SDCard slot and it does not support USB Mass Storage mode when connecting the phone to a computer. Instead, it exposes the internal storage as an MTP device.
Initially I couldn’t reproduce this problem (I have the same phone + OS combination) and thought that this may be a problem on their phone or Windows. I could see the folder and the file on my PC. After some more discussions with the user we came to the conclusion that this looked like some type of caching issue where a file created by my app only appeared on Windows after the phone was restarted.
It turns out that only files known by the MediaStore on the phone gets exposed via MTP to the computer.
A simple work-around/solution for this problem is to let the Media Store know that a new file/folder has been created and that file/folder will immediately appear on Windows.
Doing this in code is very simple, just call the MediaScannerConnection.scanFile method with the full path of the file(s) created.
If you are getting an error then I will need to have a look at the logs to figure out and then either make a fix in the app or suggest if there is something wrong on the phone.
The latest version of SMS Backup & Restore and Call Logs Backup & Restore have inbuilt options to Send Logs in case of errors. The inbuilt option to send logs normally appears when the app encounters an error and allows the user to send me an email containing details of the app’s activity and the error it encountered. Sometimes this information is not enough to figure out what could be wrong as there could be other components of the device that could be causing the problem. In such cases I need the System Logs generated on the device.
For devices running Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean) or above, you need to have a rooted device to be able to send System logs.
If you have a rooted device or a device running Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich ) or lower, follow the following instructions to send detailed System logs:
Notes:
Jan Grewe has created a web based application to convert SMS Messages from iPhone so that they can be transferred into any Android phone using the SMS Backup & Restore app. The page has instructions to find the SMS database created by iTunes and then upload it for conversion. The web application generates an XML file which can then be copied to the SD Card of the Android phone and restored using SMS Backup & Restore.
If you don’t want to upload your messages to a remote site then Dr. Bil Kirmani, one of the users of SMS Backup & Restore, came up with a manual process of doing the conversion on a Mac. In his words:
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I’m not suggesting that this is the easiest or the most efficient way to transfer all your old text messages from your iPhone to your new android phone, but it was “free” (apart from the donationware) and required no “programming” (if you don’t count excel functions).
I’ve broken it down step by step as much as possible, but this is not for the faint hearted. Maybe somebody clever could amalgamate all these steps into a script or something, but I’m just a tinkerer, not a programmer, so that’s me out. Good luck and Godspeed….
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Create a backup of your iPhone SMSes
Download the necessary software
Find and extract your old SMSes
Amend the file into SMS Backup format
ROWID; address; date; text; flags; replace; svc_center; group_id; association_id; height; UIFlags; version; subject; country; headers; recipients; read
=SUBSTITUTE(E2,CHAR(38),CHAR(38)&"amp;")
=SUBSTITUTE(F2,CHAR(60),CHAR(38)&"lt;")
=SUBSTITUTE(G2,CHAR(62),CHAR(38)&"gt;")
=SUBSTITUTE(H2,CHAR(34),CHAR(38)&"quot;")
=SUBSTITUTE(I2,CHAR(39),CHAR(38)&"apos;")
=SUBSTITUTE(J2,CHAR(13),CHAR(38)&"#13;")
=" <sms protocol="&CHAR(34)&”0”&CHAR(34)&" address="&CHAR(34)&B2&CHAR(34)&" date="&CHAR(34)&D2&CHAR(34)&" subject="&CHAR(34)&”null”&CHAR(34)&" body="&CHAR(34)&K2&CHAR(34)&" toa="&CHAR(34)&”null”&CHAR(34)&" sc_toa="&CHAR(34)&”null”&CHAR(34)&" service_center="&CHAR(34)&”null”&CHAR(34)&" read="&CHAR(34)&”1”&CHAR(34)&" status="&CHAR(34)&”-1”&CHAR(34)&" />"
Create the SMS Backup and Restore File
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes' ?> <smses> <sms protocol="0" address="NHS" date="1272018455000" subject="null" body="Medical Student Teaching Reminder" toa="208" sc_toa="0" service_center="+447782000800" read="1" status="-1" /><sms protocol=”…” etc /> </smses>
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Thanks to Bil for those instructions.
Google has recently updated its Maps App for Android to 4.1.1. Normally the update process in the market is straight forward, but some times it can get tricky, specially if you are using a custom ROM as most of the ROMs come with the Maps App pre-installed and that can make it difficult to update them.
When trying to update to the new version, if your Android phone crashes or restarts then you need to uninstall the previous version of the App first and then install the new version. To uninstall the previous version, run this command from the computer:
adb uninstall com.google.android.apps.maps
After this install the new version from the Android Market.
