Possible to retain SMS in upgrade???

AndrewTeo · Mar 25, 2012

Hi everyone,

I'm new to the community. Hope you guys can help!

My mum has a jailbroken 3GS running 4.3.3.

She has recently got a iphone 4 running 5.0.1 and would like to upgrade to it.

However, she would like to retain her SMS history from the old 3GS.

Can someone advise how to go about it? How would someone transfer the SMSes over?

Also, I do not know what method was originally used to jailbreak the 3GS. I know there are several methods out there. Would that matter?

Cheers and thanks in advance!

zig9449 · Mar 25, 2012

Yes this can be done.

You would have to restore the iPhone 4 from her 3GS backup.

However it is HIGHLY HIGHLY recommended that she DOES NOT do this. Restoring to iOS 5 from a 4.x.x backup is just a bad bad idea.

First a couple questions:

Does she want to maiantain the jailbreak?

Is the 3GS still in use while the iPhone 4 is not?

and if the iPhone 4 is unactivated, is it still on 5.0.1?

zig9449 · Mar 25, 2012

And actually there is a way to extract the SMS logs and restore them manually to another device, but the fact that its 4.3.3 to 5.x makes it all very risky.

AndrewTeo · Mar 26, 2012

Hi zig9449,

Thanks for your quick reply!

With regards to your questions:

Does she want to maiantain the jailbreak?
Nope, she does not want to jailbreak her iphone 4 if possible.

Is the 3GS still in use while the iPhone 4 is not?
Yup, the 3GS is currently in use and the iphone is new so currently not in use.

and if the iPhone 4 is unactivated, is it still on 5.0.1?
Not so sure what you mean by this? It has been activated before when a sim card was inserted. Also, just to say that the iphone is unlocked as it is not a US bought iphone.

What's the diagnosis?

zig9449 · Mar 26, 2012

AndrewTeo said:
Hi zig9449,

Thanks for your quick reply!

With regards to your questions:

Does she want to maiantain the jailbreak?
Nope, she does not want to jailbreak her iphone 4 if possible.

Is the 3GS still in use while the iPhone 4 is not?
Yup, the 3GS is currently in use and the iphone is new so currently not in use.

and if the iPhone 4 is unactivated, is it still on 5.0.1?
Not so sure what you mean by this? It has been activated before when a sim card was inserted. Also, just to say that the iphone is unlocked as it is not a US bought iphone.

What's the diagnosis?

The diagnosis........well.....it's not activated.lol.

The task you wish to accomplish......highly unlikely to do without causing problems.

If since the phone is jailbroken, she could simply backup all her SMS only...to void conflicts with other settings from a previous iOS version. But to even use the sms backup, the iPhone 4 would also need to be jailbroken, after activating.

I recommend you download iFaith v1.4.2 from ih8sn0w.com.

Open iFaith, plug in device...and click on "Dump SHSH Blobs". Save the blobs in a safe place.

This way restores will be faster....this is something every iPhone user should do whether they want to jailbreak or not.

AndrewTeo · Apr 6, 2012

Hi again zig9449,

Thanks for the additional pointers. I'm really new to this!

Got a couple of questions:
1) I'm not too familiar with the implications of activating. Does the iphone need to be activated before it should be jailbroken?

2) So it seems my best bet is to jailbreak the iphone 4 as well? But if I do how would I transfer the sms over?

3) And if I were to jailbreak the iphone 4, does it matter what was the original jailbreak used on the 3GS in order for both iphones to be "compatible" for the transfer of sms? As I undertand the jailbreak is just an exploit so the choice of jailbreak method should not matter?

Thanks!

zig9449 · Apr 6, 2012

Okay.

1) The phone will activate by itself in iTunes, when you sign into your account. Well.........When she signs into her account. Activating will be no problem.

2) When you jailbreak, you transfer the SMS from iPhone 3GS, to computer, to iPhone 4 from computer. Must be done after activating and jailbreaking the iPhone 4.

3) The jailbreak you choose most certainly does matter, and you cannot just use any jailbreak tool. You must use redsn0w version 0.9.10b6 from here only:

Windows: https://sites.google.com/a/iphone-dev.com/files/home/redsn0w_win_0.9.10b6.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

Mac: https://sites.google.com/a/iphone-dev.com/files/home/redsn0w_mac_0.9.10b6b.zip?attredirects=0&d=1

I Suggest that if her iPhone 4 is on iOS 5.0.1, that she must not update it to 5.1!!!!. If she does, she can still jailbreak but it will be a semi-tethered jailbreak. I would look that up. Really not that bad to boot tethered. How often does one reboot any way.

To actually save the SMS. you need a tool called i-FunBox. Download that.

Plug in 3GS and open i-FunBox

Click on "Raw Files System"

Navigate to "private/var/mobile/Library/SMS"

Drag "sms.db" to your desktop, or a folder on your desktop.

That is it. Her SMS are all backed up

How to restore them to the iPhone 4.

Once the iPhone 4 is jailbroken, just navigate to the same place (yes, they are located in the same path as the 3GS).

Delete "sms.db" then drag the backed up sms.db you saved from the 3GS.

WARNING:

Any messages saved in the iPhone 4 prior to placing her backed up SMS in the iPhone 4 will be deleted and replaced with her backed sms.db from the 3GS.