Two months ago, I switched from my Nokia N8 to my new Samsung Galaxy S II handset. Of course, I had to move all my data from the old phone to the new one. Didn't know, however, that switching between Symbian and Android isn't very well facilitated. It was pretty easy to move contacts, pictures and media from Symbian to Android but the complicated part was moving sms messages. I found some helpful methods online such as this (
- Connect your Nokia handset and start Nokia Ovi Suite on your PC
- Create a backup .nbu file (it doesn't matter what you select for backup, as long as it includes messages)
- Download NBU Explorer (open-source program which allows you to explore .nbu backup files and export them)
- Run NbuExplorer.exe > File > Open > Browse to your .nbu file and open it
- Go to the Messages tab and click on "Export Messages" button located above the table on the right pane
- in the "Save as type" field, select (*.xml) and save the file
- ATTENTION: As of version 3.0 of NbuExplorer, it now natively supports exporting messages in SMS Backup & Restore XML format, so you can export your messages in this format and skip to step 13. Thanks to Petrusek for adding this useful feature :)
- I wrote a little tool which converts the .xml file to the format accepted by the SMS Backup & Restore Android application. Download XML2Android.exe
- Save the tool in the same folder where you saved the .xml extracted file
- Open the command line console (Win7: Start > type "cmd" and press enter)
- CD to the directory where you saved the files (e.g. CD C:\my_messages\)
- Execute: XML2Android <yourfile.xml> (e.g. XML2Android my_sms.xml)
- This will generate a file called AndroidSMS.xml, copy this file to your Android phone
- On your Android, download the SMS Backup & Restore app from Google Play
- Now, simply run the app on your phone and Restore your old messages from the generated XML file. You're done!
Note 2: The XML2Android.exe tool requires .Net Framework 3.5 to run, if you have Windows 7 it shouldn't be a problem (you might need to install the required framework on other Windows versions). Also, it is a basic tool which I wrote roughly without capturing any exceptions or false usage... Make sure you use it correctly before reporting any bugs
Edit5: Updated link to XML2Android.exe executable.
Edit4: Updated post with NbuExplorer's native support for exporting messages in the appropriate format
Edit3: Updated the XML2Android.exe tool to set empty values for missing elements (should reduce error possibility)
Edit2: Added exception handling to skip erroneous messages
Edit: There was a bug with the XML2Android.exe originally uploaded app. It has now been fixed