Sorry to make a whole new thread about this, but just curious if anyone else has been having this 'issue'
ive flashed quite a few of the roms on the forums, and for some strange reason, i cant seem to find a rom which just WORKS
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
this for some reason appears to 'break' a lot of the rom's
the phone slow's riiiight down and when exiting one conversation to go to the next, it hangs every single time, when i go to select the messaging application, it just hangs, or doesnt even go in at all.
i've used the Energy roms, the Chrome roms, Da_G's clean rom, NATF's roms
i've been through pretty much all of the rom's on here and they ALL break once the SMS count gets in the 3000+ region, and i appreciate its simple to just 'delete' the messages, but this isnt particularly practical, at the moment i'm having to hard reset every month or so and this really takes the piss
can anyone point me in the direction of a nice lean rom that can handle an obscene amount of SMS' and emails?
with thanks
I guess no one send and receive 4000+ SMS' per month except you
that's why nobody tried to check with this issue
but the phone should be able to handle it! i mean, one of my older nokia's can handle the 4000+ with ease
The microsoft SMS program just cannot handle that many of messages. Either back them up (remove from inbox) periodically, or delete them periodically.
you may want to disable sms conversation (threading).
just out of curiosity, why do you need 4000+ sms a month ?
one question... where are your messages stored? in phone memory or on the storage card?
Pampilius86 said:
one question... where are your messages stored? in phone memory or on the storage card?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
for the email, the attachments are stored on storage card
otherwise, i never knew we could change where SMS's are stored?!
the 4000+ sms's are just what i use tbh, thats on a good month tho, usually hovers around that mark however
i remember back in the wizard/hermes time clean rom's were all the rage, now, since we've got the devices with huge amounts of ram/rom all we're seeing is bloated rom's!
bursucul said:
you may want to disable sms conversation (threading).
just out of curiosity, why do you need 4000+ sms a month ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the thing is, i use the threading facility a LOT, back before wm6/6.1 i actually had an application i would install on my ppc to have the SMS' threaded
but to be honest, why should the tp not be able to handle that many SMS's without slowing down?!
duke_stix said:
Sorry to make a whole new thread about this, but just curious if anyone else has been having this 'issue'
ive flashed quite a few of the roms on the forums, and for some strange reason, i cant seem to find a rom which just WORKS
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
this for some reason appears to 'break' a lot of the rom's
the phone slow's riiiight down and when exiting one conversation to go to the next, it hangs every single time, when i go to select the messaging application, it just hangs, or doesnt even go in at all.
i've used the Energy roms, the Chrome roms, Da_G's clean rom, NATF's roms
i've been through pretty much all of the rom's on here and they ALL break once the SMS count gets in the 3000+ region, and i appreciate its simple to just 'delete' the messages, but this isnt particularly practical, at the moment i'm having to hard reset every month or so and this really takes the piss
can anyone point me in the direction of a nice lean rom that can handle an obscene amount of SMS' and emails?
with thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I dont think this would be the ROMs fault. You see the more messages you store in your fone the less memory and stability it has. Instead of having old messages in your fone why not delete them? Talk about practicality, whats practical about having old messages in ur fone just to take up excess memory? So someone texts u one question, u answer it and have no intentions of messaging them back, yet its more practical to keep these messages in ur fone and then complain that u have to hard reset instead of deleting a few messages due to having all these redundant mesages that u really dont need? Seems to me an intelligent person would rather delete a few messages rather than hard resetting their device and lose everything. Maybe u can make a fresh ROM with no extras and nothing more than a fone and an email device. I mean, why have a PDA if all ur gonna do is text and email? Seems to me u can save a few hundred bux and just get a cheap lil fone that has no customization whatsoever to leave all the room for messaging? Sorry if I sound like I have an attitude, honestly I dont, I just think that the chefs u mentioned have awesome ROMs that keep getting better and better yet u diss them cuz ud rather hard resest and lose everything rather than simply deleting a few hundred messages that u dont need anyway.
It's like if you don't clean your house regularly and just throw your rubbish everywhere, then you complain that you're living in a pig sty and your house fills up with rubbish so fast you can't move around the house as quickly as you used to. Then after a month, you need to fully renovate the whole interior of the house again so that you have space to walk...
My suggestions :
1) start learning some housekeeping(make that little effort to delete the sms yourself)
2) get a bigger house (new phone with more ram and faster CPU)
3) get a cleaner to come in to clean your rubbish once in awhile (there might be some sms program out there that can auto delete your sms on a regular basis)
4) or reorganise the layout of your house so that it's more efficient (forget about sms threading and use the conventional format, I'm sure it'll speed things up a bit since it doesn't have to load the entire conversation everytime)
duke_stix said:
but the phone should be able to handle it! i mean, one of my older nokia's can handle the 4000+ with ease
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is your older nokia using sms threading and displaying the whole history of the conversation everytime you enter the inbox?
I highly doubt it.. so you've got your answer there already.
I used to be a project manager, I would send about 500 emails a day at work easily. After a month of working it would take FOREVER to open outlook. Thats because it has to load the entire contents of 10k + emails. Its the same with your phone. Back up and delete or don't complain. Flash a stock ROM and open your windows folder, and then flash a custom ROM and do the same. you will see the speed increase there. Also, if you leave SMS open and just hit end key it wont have to reload everything every time you open a message.
I have the same problem that your talking about since i average about 7-12K a month of sms.. Like everyone said the only way to deal with it is just to clear your inbox or put it to unthreaded.. Our phones just werent meant to hold that much sms i suppose..
duke_stix said:
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
this for some reason appears to 'break' a lot of the rom's
the phone slow's riiiight down and when exiting one conversation to go to the next, it hangs every single time, when i go to select the messaging application, it just hangs, or doesnt even go in at all.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe most of the problem here is that you don't precisely understand what's going on behind-the-scenes. Your CPU/processor is only capable of running a single instruction at once- and thus only process a finite amount of data per unit time.
When designing an algorithm (in this case, the algorithm that reads SMS/E-mail database entries and displays them onscreen), tasks which apply to more than one or two items are usually completed by either iteration or recursion. For a task such as enumerating SMS messages onscreen, the process would be iterative; for example, if you were to break it down into simple steps, those steps might be:
1. Read the current SMS message from the database.
2. Display it on screen.
3. If there's another text message after this, repeat this process for it.
Step 1 itself actually is composed of several detailed steps, which take the time to perform a second algorithm, which tries to locate the current SMS message in the database, usually based on a unique identifier and a hashing algorithm. This takes time, but is faster than the alternative- which is to check each SMS and ask "is this the one I want?". Instead of having to check each message, the device usually only has to check a few until it finds the right location.
You can think of this as the device automatically categorizing messages into virtual 'boxes'- you have to spend a hell of a lot less time digging through a box to find 1 document out of 10 then by searching through a much larger heap of 4000 documents.
Step 3 is also composed of several steps, as the device has to figure out which SMS message is really next. As the user is capable of configuring the way in which the messages are sorted (by date, sender, etc.), the message that's next in the database is probably not the next message that's stored in the database. Time has to be spend finding the message, usually by yet another algorithm.
The problem is, each of these steps, and each of their sub-steps, and each of the sub-steps required to run those (all the way down to the machine code level) take time, and each have to be executed for every message the application would like to display.
Thread-view further complicates the matter by creating additional relations between the messages, and requiring the OS to look for even more posts during each step.
And this process isn't all that's going on at once- the operating system is trying to do something called TDM, or Time-Division Multiplexing (Multitasking), which allow you to run more than one program at once on a single CPU (which in turn can only do one thing at once). This basically lets the individual processes take individual turns so quickly that they seem simultaneous.
Because of all this, computer scientists rate their algorithms by degradation. We actually have a measure called Big-O (asymptotic) notation that tells you how well an algorithm handles load.
A good algorithm generally has performance of O(N) or better. This means that for every N elements (in your case, e-mail), it takes approximately N iterations to complete. Note the assumption that each "base iteration" executes in a (roughly) fixed time.
Assuming the WM message app uses a sensible algorithm (and it would be difficult for it not to), we can assume its efficiency is approximately O(N)- as it is simply O(N) for non-threaded, and it is O((N/S) * S) for threaded, which simplifies to O(N). This means that for every 4000 messages, it will need to iterate 4000 times.
Considering the application can't store 4000-messages worth of data, it spends a lot of time during each iteration moving messages in and out of memory.
Given all of this, the Windows Mobile message parsing algorithm is the cause of your 'slowness' and 'hangups'. These periods of non-responsiveness are simply WM trying to run through the algorithm for all of the huge quantities of messages.
Hence, the problem is that Windows Mobile simply wasn't designed to bear the load you were forcing it to bear. This means the problem isn't related to the implementation in any given ROM.
can anyone point me in the direction of a nice lean rom that can handle an obscene amount of SMS' and emails?
with thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A ROM isn't going to be your solution- every ROM uses the same core Windows Mobile messaging applications.
It is possible that a combination of a data structure and message parsing algorithm (with the addition of hash and cache optimized for the way you specifically use messaging) could handle all of these messages without any considerable degradation; but it would run far less efficiently on small amount of messages than the current WM scheme. (And think: how many users have as many messages as you?)
Since no one really needs as many messages as you seem to, consider your options:
1) Implement a database optimized for large amount of messages. Implement a program that hooks all messages and places them in this database instead of the WM one. Write your own message reading/writing application and use in place of the WM one. Note that no one will do this for you. It's not a public interest: if you want it, you'll have to write it. We can help you- but we're not here to do the work for you.
2) Try a third party SMS reader/writer like Vito SMS-Chat. I don't think these will fare much better (in fact, they may fare worse), but if they implement any database of their own and any type of localized caching (especially of recent messages), they may work a bit better.
3) Remove your older SMS messages. This is probably the best option. If you don't need those messages anymore, a Microsoft applet called InboxExtender adds buttons to delete all messages (and to mark them all as read.)
4) Don't use threaded mode. This will decrease the time each parsing iteration takes.
---
This isn't a bug; nor is it a glitch, nor is it WM being crappy. It's much the same as if you tell photoshop to open an 8GB file on your desktop. Your computer may slow to a halt and take forever doing it- but the cause isn't that your computer is crappy, but rather that you're trying to open such a huge file.
Wow! Talk about a detailed explanation. Great explanation ktemkin, u obviously know what ur talkin about. Im actually a part time computer programmer. The biggest problem I see/hear about is people sayng their systems are getting way too slow. No surprise that the biggest reason for this is the used space in their computers hard drive for out-of-date programs, used cache space, ...basically all of the things theyve used before and just never cleaned out. I install 1 program, free their computer up of its junked up memory and update their programs. On this I get credit to simply sit on my butt and delete a few things, lol. Id suppose regardless of the device/computer its all the same. IE, the more room u have to work with, the faster the device's responsiveness is.
Best advice for these PDAs and smartphones for emails is dont leave all of your emails in your inbox folder. Make different folders, then as u go through your emails simply move the selected ones to the selected folders. Then DO NOT sync all of your folders to your device. Only sync the inbox to your device. Then if u ever need a message, u will know which folder its in, then sync that 1 folder, download the message(s), then after ur done, remove that folder from your sync list. When u organize your emails this way u will have a much enjoyable and longer life experience with your device. Hope this helps.
panthersdzynes said:
I dont think this would be the ROMs fault. You see the more messages you store in your fone the less memory and stability it has. Instead of having old messages in your fone why not delete them? Talk about practicality, whats practical about having old messages in ur fone just to take up excess memory? So someone texts u one question, u answer it and have no intentions of messaging them back, yet its more practical to keep these messages in ur fone and then complain that u have to hard reset instead of deleting a few messages due to having all these redundant mesages that u really dont need? Seems to me an intelligent person would rather delete a few messages rather than hard resetting their device and lose everything. Maybe u can make a fresh ROM with no extras and nothing more than a fone and an email device. I mean, why have a PDA if all ur gonna do is text and email? Seems to me u can save a few hundred bux and just get a cheap lil fone that has no customization whatsoever to leave all the room for messaging? Sorry if I sound like I have an attitude, honestly I dont, I just think that the chefs u mentioned have awesome ROMs that keep getting better and better yet u diss them cuz ud rather hard resest and lose everything rather than simply deleting a few hundred messages that u dont need anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The fact of the matter is, that a lot of the messages on my handset DO need to remain on there for at least the remainder of a fortnight following receipt of said message.
the only 'qualm' i was having was that my older wizard and hermes devices seem to have managed that number of SMS' and more perfectly fine, but my Raphael begins to struggle.
lukesky said:
It's like if you don't clean your house regularly and just throw your rubbish everywhere, then you complain that you're living in a pig sty and your house fills up with rubbish so fast you can't move around the house as quickly as you used to. Then after a month, you need to fully renovate the whole interior of the house again so that you have space to walk...
My suggestions :
1) start learning some housekeeping(make that little effort to delete the sms yourself)
2) get a bigger house (new phone with more ram and faster CPU)
3) get a cleaner to come in to clean your rubbish once in awhile (there might be some sms program out there that can auto delete your sms on a regular basis)
4) or reorganise the layout of your house so that it's more efficient (forget about sms threading and use the conventional format, I'm sure it'll speed things up a bit since it doesn't have to load the entire conversation everytime)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have already tried disabling the SMS threading and although it speeds it up a little, i then also lose track of what message has come from whom.
i understand that 'doing a bit of house keeping' is what i should be doing, however, i barely have time to do said house keeping, and when i do attempt to delete a large volume of messages in one go the phone hangs on me again!
panthersdzynes said:
Wow! Talk about a detailed explanation. Great explanation ktemkin, u obviously know what ur talkin about. Im actually a part time computer programmer. The biggest problem I see/hear about is people sayng their systems are getting way too slow. No surprise that the biggest reason for this is the used space in their computers hard drive for out-of-date programs, used cache space, ...basically all of the things theyve used before and just never cleaned out. I install 1 program, free their computer up of its junked up memory and update their programs. On this I get credit to simply sit on my butt and delete a few things, lol. Id suppose regardless of the device/computer its all the same. IE, the more room u have to work with, the faster the device's responsiveness is.
Best advice for these PDAs and smartphones for emails is dont leave all of your emails in your inbox folder. Make different folders, then as u go through your emails simply move the selected ones to the selected folders. Then DO NOT sync all of your folders to your device. Only sync the inbox to your device. Then if u ever need a message, u will know which folder its in, then sync that 1 folder, download the message(s), then after ur done, remove that folder from your sync list. When u organize your emails this way u will have a much enjoyable and longer life experience with your device. Hope this helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my emails are already pretty much organised, and i've only got it syncing the last 7 days for me, emails to be honest are fine its moreso the SMS side of things.
I was not complaining nor targetting any particular chef, i was merely voicing my concern that a device as powerful as the raphael seems to baulk at the prospect of a few thousand messages when the older wizard and hermes seem to manage perfectly fine.
i'm not exactly expecting an instantaneous loading of my inbox, i'm not entirely thick, i appreciate that having such a large number of SMS' will inevitably slow the handset down, however, i do not see why the handset should HANG when i try to open the messaging application, or why, when i try to go and open the messaging application it just doesnt register that i've asked it to open the application, just stops and i have to 'tap' it a few times before it opens.
duke_stix said:
the main thing i use my handset for is email and SMS messaging, in any given month easily 4000+ SMS' will be sent and the same number received.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
4000+ sms' send AND receive???
so that means:
8000 per month / 30 days in a month = 266,667 per day
266,667 per day / 960 minutes (16 hours * 60) awake a day = 0,278
so say you are 16 hours awake on a day than you send/receive a sms every 15 seconds?? don't you have a real life?
TheWeird1 said:
4000+ sms' send AND receive???
so that means:
8000 per month / 30 days in a month = 266,667 per day
266,667 per day / 960 minutes (16 hours * 60) awake a day = 0,278
so say you are 16 hours awake on a day than you send/receive a sms every 15 seconds?? don't you have a real life?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not all of the messages that are sent and received are single SMS' long!
majority, if not all will be 3/4+ messages long and the replies can be twice as long
duke_stix said:
The fact of the matter is, that a lot of the messages on my handset DO need to remain on there for at least the remainder of a fortnight following receipt of said message.
the only 'qualm' i was having was that my older wizard and hermes devices seem to have managed that number of SMS' and more perfectly fine, but my Raphael begins to struggle.
I have already tried disabling the SMS threading and although it speeds it up a little, i then also lose track of what message has come from whom.
i understand that 'doing a bit of house keeping' is what i should be doing, however, i barely have time to do said house keeping, and when i do attempt to delete a large volume of messages in one go the phone hangs on me again!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1 thing's for sure, the wizard and hermes are definitely non-threaded sms. But it's hard to compare apple to apple. Did you have 4000 in your Inbox and Sent folders on your Wizard and Hermes too?
I don't think the phone has hung, it's probably doing the processing for you. Have a little patience and let it sit there for awhile and do it's thing and see if it's really hanged.
duke_stix said:
my emails are already pretty much organised, and i've only got it syncing the last 7 days for me, emails to be honest are fine its moreso the SMS side of things.
I was not complaining nor targetting any particular chef, i was merely voicing my concern that a device as powerful as the raphael seems to baulk at the prospect of a few thousand messages when the older wizard and hermes seem to manage perfectly fine.
i'm not exactly expecting an instantaneous loading of my inbox, i'm not entirely thick, i appreciate that having such a large number of SMS' will inevitably slow the handset down, however, i do not see why the handset should HANG when i try to open the messaging application, or why, when i try to go and open the messaging application it just doesnt register that i've asked it to open the application, just stops and i have to 'tap' it a few times before it opens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe you should try Da_G's test ROM.. the feedback is that it's very fast. If that doesn't work for you, it's time to get a new phone.. maybe consider one of the 1GHZ models...
i have 8000 plus messages on my tp n it doesn't slow down
thing is, i don't use threaded sms. can't get used to it cos i've been using wm since wm5 n it doesn't have it. i guess i got used to the older stuff
I've seen numerous questions regarding problems merging sms messsages after being restored from databases, applications, social networks or ported from different operating systems, etc all of which seem to relate to compatibility issues. My issue is, on the face of it, much more simple but I have yet to find a solution.
One of my contacts recently changed telephone numbers resulting in subsequent texts being listed in a different thread. After adding the new number to the existing contact I now have two sms threads under the same person's name. I'd like to merge these and delete the old number but I can't find a way to do that. This means that if I want to keep a name for the old sms thread then I have to keep the old number in my contacts. Seems a bit daft to me.
I'm currently using a Samsung Galaxy GT-I9000 with 2.34 firmware but unless I'm missing something WM, iPhone, etc have the same issue. Does anyone know if merging texts in the way I've mentioned can be done?
I don't know if apps like GO SMS and Handcent address this problem but even if they did its like taking a sledgehammer to a minor inconvenience.
Thanks
I'm having exactly the same problem for more than a year now. I really hope someone will come up with a solution for this! Thanks
I have been also trying for a solution but nothing
(Hope I'm not resurrecting a too old thread...)
I successfully merged SMS threads by creating a backup using SMS Backup & Restore.
Just open the created .xml file in e.g. Notepad++, then replace your contact's old number in the "address" field with the new one. Now load the altered backup file back onto your phone, delete your messages from within the app, and restore your newly created backup file.
Although it worked fine for me on the first try, I recommend keeping your initial backup file, and save your editing to a copy - just in case.
Using this method, I also fixed some splitted threads, where one contact with one number got split up in several threads, because of an incorrect number restore from backups when switching phones.
Hope this helps.
Thanks to pucksen for resurrecting this old thread. I got here by google.
My problem was a bit different - I had multiple conversation threads from the same number from the same contact (in both stock SMS app and Go SMS Pro). It started after using Pure Messenger, and only affected my two contacts with iphones. It seemed random which messages ended up where.
Looking in the XML backup file from SMS Backup & Restore, I noticed why I was having this problem, the address field sometimes had random space characters appended to the end of the numbers! For example:
address="4165555555"
address="4165555555 "
Removed the spaces after the affected messages and voila, all is well.
No idea how or why this happened, or if im going to have to export/fix/reimport my messages often to keep my conversations readable... but at least there's a way to fix it.
Now if only I knew how to write an app that could automate this for me...
epexegenesis said:
Thanks to pucksen for resurrecting this old thread. I got here by google.
My problem was a bit different - I had multiple conversation threads from the same number from the same contact (in both stock SMS app and Go SMS Pro). It started after using Pure Messenger, and only affected my two contacts with iphones. It seemed random which messages ended up where.
Looking in the XML backup file from SMS Backup & Restore, I noticed why I was having this problem, the address field sometimes had random space characters appended to the end of the numbers! For example:
address="4165555555"
address="4165555555 "
Removed the spaces after the affected messages and voila, all is well.
No idea how or why this happened, or if im going to have to export/fix/reimport my messages often to keep my conversations readable... but at least there's a way to fix it.
Now if only I knew how to write an app that could automate this for me...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thread re-resurrected! Not sure if you've solved this, but I imagine the process could be expedited by using the Find/Replace feature in Notepad++ (or practically anything else) by searching for " with a space in front of it and replacing it with " with no space.
As for the thread's OP, I agree that Android needs to have this functionality built-in. Especially considering how many users have alternate Google Voice numbers.
This is the one thing that WebOS actually got right. Never believed I'd ever actually miss something from that terrible phone.
Thanks patthew, that makes it a bit quicker - it is still a pain though. And unfortunately the problem also has gotten bigger....now I've got this:
address="4165555555"
address="+14165555555"
So up to 4 threads with each contact.
This is ridiculous.
I also can't believe how many people there are with the same problem and no fix. From page 1 google search:
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1262261
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1397030
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1192736
forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1124902
http://android.stackexchange.com/qu...-creates-multiple-threads-for-the-same-number
http://www.droidxforums.com/forum/d...t-creating-multiple-threads-same-contact.html
hello all,
I am also having this problem, i confirm that not even with handcent sms it doesn't work if a contact has several numbers it opens a new thread by phone number.
the manual edition of the xml file seems the only workaround is the edition of the backup file which is of course prone to error.
anyway thanks for the tips i hadn't thought of editing the sms backup and restore xml.
kind regards
Mario
Before doing this BACK UP YOUR SMS/MMS!!! If you screw something up and lose everything don't come crying to me, back your crap up!
Now, here is how I did it. This merged 2 different phone numbers/threads into 1 SMS thread and moved all MMS (Pictures/Media) as well.
In my XML file I found these 4 formats for the number I was changing, why the numbers are all different formats I have no idea. Make sure you don't have even more.
(555) 444-7777
5554447777
+15554447777
+1 555-444-7777
And here is a small sample from the XML file with the numbers changed to the 555 crap or X'd out.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<threads count="7" xmlns="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX">
<thread address="+15554447777">
<sms msgBox="inbox" date="2012-07-30T21:40:43.522Z" locked="false" seen="true" read="true" serviceCenter="+1XXXXXXXXXX" address="+15554447777" encoding="plain">Hello World!</sms>
<sms msgBox="inbox" date="2012-07-30T21:41:13.522Z" locked="false" seen="true" read="true" serviceCenter="+1XXXXXXXXXX" address="+15554447777" encoding="plain">Hello World AGAIN!</sms>
<mms msgBox="sent" version="1.2" type="sendReq" contentType="application/vnd.wap.multipart.related" date="2012-09-08T02:30:19.000Z" locked="false" seen="true" read="true" subject="">
<addresses>
<address type="from">insert-address-token</address>
<address type="to">5554447777</address>
</addresses>
<part contentType="application/smil" contentId="<smil>" contentLocation="smil.xml" encoding="plain"><smil><head><layout><root-layout width="1230px" height="720px"/><region id="Image" left="0" top="0" width="1230px" height="648px" fit="meet"/></layout></head><body><par dur="5000ms"><img src="IMG_20120907_212958.jpg" region="Image"/></par></body></smil></part>
<part contentType="image/jpeg" order="0" contentId="<IMG_20120907_212958>" contentLocation="IMG_20120907_212958.jpg" encoding="base64">/9j/4ABAAD/2wBDAAIBAQEBAQIBAQECAgICAgQDAgICAgUEBAMEB</part>
</mms>
</thread>
</threads>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First off, I used Titanium Backup Pro to dump SMS/MMS to XML (It's under Options/Backup data to XML) I have no idea if the standard Titanium Backup has this or not.
Titanium Backup Pro stores the messages with all SMS first, then all MMS after for that thread. What I did was a search/replace for all 4 different number formats listed above to the new phone number, then I cut/pasted all of the SMS from the new number thread the old number thread right under the last SMS message in that thread, then I cut/pasted the MMS from the new number thread to the old number thread at the end of the MMS section. In short, I moved the SMS and MMS from one thread to the other to their corresponding areas. I moved the "new" number to the old number thread because there were only a handful of messages in the new thread so I went that route. And because I did it this way, all the messages were in order by date.
After I had emptied out the thread (nothing between <thread address="XXXXXXXXXX"> and </thread>) I deleted the thread.
Then I updated the threads count to "6" because I was merging 2 threads and of course taking one thread away from the 7 threads = 6, saved it, and then restored it using Titanium Backup and BAM, 2 threads were now 1 with all of my texts and pictures intact.
Now, I have no idea if the cut/pasting is necessary or if Titanium and Android can magically figure out the two threads belong together after changing all the numbers but I didn't feel like messing with it. I just made it a nice neat XML file like I figured it should be and went with that.
For the XML editor I used XMLSpy 30 day trial (it's expensive to buy but I figured I would only be doing this once so what the heck, trial it is) but I'm sure anything that edits XML properly
would do just fine.
Initially I tried merging the two threads using Sqlite3 update commands on mmssms.db and succeeded in merging the 2 SMS threads but found that MMS didn't follow and decided that I'd rather mess with XML. Eh...
Also, if for some reason (like me) you can't see the XML backup file in Windows I wound up just using adb to pull/push the file from/to the phone.
Anyway, hope this helps those of you trying to do this. Good luck!
Good method but UNconceivably hard to perform on 9000 text messages, when more than 2 or 3 are seperated into multiple threads
But i did it (at least for the contacts i sms the most)
It cannot be that difficult for an average IT student to write a simple script to do what android should be doing on its own.
Anyway.
Just try and find the contacts whose conversations have been split. Note them down and open the xml from sms backup and restore through Notepad++ or a simple kate (if you are in a linux environment)
Search for your contact using some of the characters of its name. For example if the conversations of Smith John have been split, then try first to look for smith (disable case matching)
When you find the line that corresponds to the first message of Smith, copy every single character in address.
ie
Code:
address='"SMITH JOHN" <693123458>'
Here you HAVE to copy everything after the = until the gt;'
DO NOT include the =, nor any character after the last ' , NOT EVEN the space that comes right after.
Paste
Code:
'"SMITH JOHN" <693123458>'
in the find and replace dialogue.
For the replace part, include only the phone number between ""
Code:
Replace with
"693123458"
Replace all.
Now try again searching for smith. Sometimes we change little things in our contacts and over time conversations split for that reason. You might find that you once upon a time you had saved the contact as Smith Johny. So search again. Then search using the phone number if your phone has the bad habit of spliting up the numbers like
123-1234-123 or something
Try looking for -123 or space123
Replace everything with the phone number alone surrounded by "".
This way when your contacts are in place there will be only one thread for each contact.
SO many hours of sleep lost
epexegenesis said:
Thanks to pucksen for resurrecting this old thread. I got here by google.
My problem was a bit different - I had multiple conversation threads from the same number from the same contact (in both stock SMS app and Go SMS Pro). It started after using Pure Messenger, and only affected my two contacts with iphones. It seemed random which messages ended up where.
Looking in the XML backup file from SMS Backup & Restore, I noticed why I was having this problem, the address field sometimes had random space characters appended to the end of the numbers! For example:
address="4165555555"
address="4165555555 "
Removed the spaces after the affected messages and voila, all is well.
No idea how or why this happened, or if im going to have to export/fix/reimport my messages often to keep my conversations readable... but at least there's a way to fix it.
Now if only I knew how to write an app that could automate this for me...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Learn how to code & do that in a handful of lines of code
Indirect Solution but this might come handy for most people in this thread
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=angel.twitch&hl=en
Another workaround
Another workaround would of using hangouts version 10 as an SMS app.
Thread re-resurrected, again. lol
Anyway, Galaxy S21U, Android 11, stock messenger. Added their old number to their contact, but all it did was name both threads after them, not merge them.
When I run SMS Backup & Restore, it doesn't seem to get ALL of the messages from the new number's thread. It did seem to get all of them from the prior thread though. SEEM being I'm not entirely sure whether it retrieved all of both theirs and my messages, without further investigation.
If it did not retrieve ALL of the messages, how would I go about making it do so? Settings, a different app/method?
Using Notepad++ was a breeze to find/replace all of the old numbers to the new one though.
If I were to restore my edited backup, without deleting any of the messages that are currently there, what happens?
Does it overwrite what's currently there, deleting the current set of messages, or does it just add back all of the messages to the specified thread, resulting in double messages that would need to be deleted?
Thanks for any help with this. Didn't anticipate this issue. Didn't think this person was going to change their number, or how seemingly difficult this problem actually is.
Oops, seem to have cross posted due to having two tabs open, cant make sense of the changed layout!
Mods please feel free to delete this thread if no one has answered!
Hi all!
An oldie but a goldie!
I've changed from S6 32g, to S6Eedge 64g since I was running out of space.
Now I need to transfer 4000 photos (sorted by date) to the new phone. A direct copy from PC converts all the created dates to the current date (ie when transfer is done) which as you can imagine screws everything up royally!
Ive tried and failed in many many many ways including:
Samsung Smart Switch
FTP
Syncing programs from pc to phone
ADB push
WEBdav
Hail marys, and praying to every god out there
They all bugger up the dates...........
The ONLY ONLY way Ive found out that works is by zipping up the original files, transferring to new phone, and unzipping locally with Total Commander. ONLY Total Commander seems to be able to unzip and preserve the dates, all the other file managers and extracting programs (I tried 10-15) out there can NOT manage this. Total Commander probably works cuz im rooted, and it can use this.
HOWEVER this only worked with smaller directories, but my main pics folder is a 8 gig compressed zip, and when I try the same way Total Commander only manages to unzip the same 700 files and stops (anyone else come across this limitation?). So the only way I can manage is to zip up the original files in 7-8 different zip files and unzip locally individually, which is a big hassle.
Ive googled many threads on this problem, most of them were unresolved and some solutions refer to previous android versions or software and dont work anymore.
I'm hoping that you all dont spend four days setting up a new phone everytime ( home screen and app settings is a whole different drama! Thank you Titanium backup! iOS really has the jump on Andoird when it comes to changing phones...)
The only thing I can think of which I havent tried yet is USB OTG, since I dont have the cable. Anyone can confirm whether this method keeps the dates unchnaged?
So in your experience, whats the best way of doing this? How do you guys do it?
To be honest for 4 thousand photos swapping back and forth between devices you are better off using a could storage. Especially if you want to minimise the risk of loosing them all if something goes wrong. All zip folders will extract with the original date it. You could try and torrent you DCIM folder and language download it to your computer. Torrents download with their file dates intact.
Thanks for your reply!
IMHO this cloud thing is actually whats causing so many of the problems in hardware design these days in general.
Why is it so hard for companies to realise that when you are two floors underground, or roaming or even in middle of central london, net connection is not guaranteed......
Let alone the speed, convenience, security issues etc etc etc
As to the loss risk, I back them up on my home pcs regularly with a sync application, which ironically enough works perfectly well thank god!
So for me cloud is a no go....
As to your other suggestion, sounds great
Can I torrent just on the local net? ie direct from phone to pc?
Any apps you can reccomend? will save me trawling through a hundred crap apps in GPlay.
Thanks again for your time, its appreciated!
PS re what you said about all zips extracting correctly. Can you try on your device? Zip up a few small old files on your pc, transfer the zip to phone, extract there, and check the dates.
All except one of the ones I have tried do it, as mentioned above.
PPS Gave your torrent suggestion a go, no joy. All the transferred files had the new date ;-(.
I tried the the utorrent android app...
Update and for future help for people who will come across this issue.
I managed it!
I used Total Commander on the phone through the LAN plugin function, to access my backup folder on the pc, select all files and copy to local phone directory.
You need to initiate the copy from the PHONE on Total Commander, ie pull the files onto the phone, dont copy them by drag and drop from PC.
It took a while but it was done!
Dates and timestamps all preserved and correct!