SMS on a basic (flip) phone

[ehchandler]

Hello - So I have a Samsung Rugby 3 (SGH-A997) rugged basic flip-phone. I prefer the flip phone, but am switching to a Galaxy Express-3 for grad school for the email and social media capability. But I have plenty of SMS messages on the Rugby that I want to keep, some some for sentimental value, some for the info and data that they have in them that I need.

I have tried Samsung's own service, Samsung Kies, but messages are the only thing it seems to not have a menu for with this phone. I have looked at BitPim, but that is for CDMA phones, and the Rugby 3 is a GSM phone, so that's a no go.

Is there any program that will export the texts? I have seen some forums mention using developer tools to allow debugging, and then going deep into the phone to do something to get the texts. If this makes sense, and is the only way, I'm up for learning if there is a tutorial on that.

Note: When they put the new SIM card into the Galaxy (not the old one from the Rugby 3), some messages from the Rugby automatically uploaded to my message app on the Galaxy. I thought this was because they were stored on the Rugby's SIM card, but it was really many (though not all) of the messages that I had received in the previous 48 hours or so. Not sure if that helps y'all understand what is going on, because this is all new to me.

Thanks for taking the time to read and respond!

 

[hang-the-9]

You'd have to contact Samsung or your carrier for help, those older flip phoned do not have the same interface for backups as the new phones.

The reason you got the messages when you activated the new phone is because you get the messages from your carrier, so they just downloaded to your current device. If you use a program like WhatsApp or another WiFi text program you can get all of your messages, or at least quite a few when you set up the program on a new device. I had my phone die, installed the WiFi texting app I used, and all my texts were re-downloaded because they were saved on my account.

Since only a few came down for you, that means that they either don't keep the older texts or that they don't setup the download of them for space and network usage reasons. You can try to forward the text messages to yourself again, then they will come through as new texts. Or just take pictures of the texts with a phone if you need the info in them.