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Transferring SMS from iPhone to Android (for developers)

I recently bought a Nexus 4 to replace my old iPhone 3GS. The transition has been smooth except for the transfer of the SMS from iPhone to Android which led me to write some code and this post.

The most interesting article I found on this subject was iPhone SMS to Android Converter. Considering iSMS2droid has not been updated since October 2011 and does not seem to be compatible with iOS 6, if you choose this solution, you will have to upload your messages on Jan Grewe server. You decide for yourself if you are OK with sending your SMS database to his server.

I chose to follow another path. After failing to find iSMS2droid or SMS Backup & Restore source code I started coding my own SMS transfer application.

Limitations

  • Only works with iOS 6 SMS
  • Only works with Android having the sms:// content provider
  • Does not handle attachments yet
  • Requires Android SDK to build the Android app

Step 1: Find your iPhone SMS database

In short:
  1. Backup your iPhone with iTunes
  2. Search for the 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 file
  3. Copy this file on your Desktop
  4. Rename the copy to sms.sqlite
The detailed procedure is described here.

Step 2: Change the journal_mode of your SMS database

I had some problem working with the iPhone SMS database in the Android app due to its journal_mode set to WAL. Everything worked fine after changing it to DELETE.

Unfortunately, I did not succeed implementing this step in the Android application. If you know how to do it, please tell me.

If you have sqlite3 installed on your computer, you can execute the following command lines in a terminal:
$ sqlite3 path_to_desktop/sms.sqlite
sqlite> PRAGMA journal_mode=DELETE;
Otherwise, you can use SQLite Manager, a Firefox plugin. 

Step 3: Import your messages to Android

  1. Copy the sms.sqlite file on you Android phone, if possible in /sdcard/
  2. Download import-ios6-sms source code from GitHub
  3. Build the application and install it on your Android phone
  4. Launch the application
  5. Press the "Test" button
  6. If the test succeeded, press the "Import iOS 6 SMS" button
  7. Open your SMS inbox to see the progress

Note for rooted Androids

If your are root on your Android, you can directly play with your SMS database. You can get some ideas on how to do this by looking at the source of Andoid-SMS-DB-importer.
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