SMS Backup on the RIZR Z3

Now it may come as a shock to some people, but there are a few of us who prefer to backup old conversations. I can think of a few reasons to do so, which could be explained better here. Anyhow, one of my most intense issues as far as computers go have always been with transferring data, and usually from there from a mobile device to a desktop/laptop. It isn't because it is impossible, but in fact because the software quality is so low. It makes sense, in a business kind of way. If a new phone comes out every year, and the data ports use new and upgraded protocols for faster speeds and more docking capabilities, then new software will need to be written every year to translate the data to something usable. If new software must come out every year, more money can be made by writing new software for each device and not supporting the software from the old device. Therefore, the current device based software is terrible.

But beyond that, there are still choices out there for dumb phone backup. From what I have read, it seems that you cannot use P2K(the protocol) software to backup SMS, MMS, or phonebook contacts, and, at least in the motorola world, the only way to skin this cat is via AT mode. What is is? I'm not sure. Have I heard of it? Yes. Thats all. So what tools are open for this?

P2K Tools VS seems to have the functionality for this job, and can pull the contacts off like a champ. SMS on the other hand, not so much. It seems that it can handle downloading messages, just not very many. My RIZR can hold roughly 525 messages before it gets full, and the most I have successfully pulled off with P2K tools is roughly 100. This I did by deleting messages until it would no longer time out and crash the program and/or phone.

Motorola Phone Tools obviously has the ability to do this job, just it does it very badly. The interface is nice and clean compared to most of the basement apps that get written for this kind of thing, but MPT is unstable, heavy, and has most of the same issues that P2K Tools does, except for when it crashes, it crashes much harder. Additionally, after looking through my old logs, I found that MPT didn't actually download all the messages, it would cut off the last X messages and display no error or notification. Angering. But lo, what is that? The shining light on the horizon? Written in (Russian?)?

After scouring forums, searching for links, and fighting bad programming, I came upon Moto SMS Manager. Life.Saver. Pretty much, this is the only program I have tried that seems to work even most of the time. It seems like its been abandoned and forgotten, but it still works. I found this site here with a screenshot and download link (a .rar) to this program. If you decide to use this, you will realize quickly that A) it is in a foreign language (which can be changed by the third menu from the right) and B) if you run multiple instances (which has happened every time I have re-found it) it will throw some nasty looking memory exception error. But it works.

To get it to work, you change the language, restart the program, click the connect button, and then read. It will then pull all of the texts from your phone in very little time(for me, around 5 seconds). You then will want to hit "Save All". When you go to save it, you will probably want to change the template as the labels are in a foreign langage. Mine were "From/to" "Date" "Index" and "Message". Currently, the application doesn't seem to differentiate between sent and received messages, so the "From/to" seems to apply. I uploaded my to google docs (and did not let it convert it) and all was fine.

http://www.e398mod.com/content/view/334/28/

Enjoy!