Recover Deleted Text Messages on Android

Text Messages are an important source of key information that we store on our mobiles. It can be financial updates or reminders you’ve set up for the next movie show.

While our belief in the invincibility of our cell phones is definitely commendable, there are times when things go wrong. Software or hardware failures or even an accidental deletion on our part can leave us bereft of the ever-important data stored on our phones.

Android has come up with some programs that help us retrieve deleted messages, contacts and more. These programs can prove invaluable in restoring not just our mobile data but our very sanity.

Will the Restore Always Work?

Android restoration programs are definitely splendid but they function under some constraints. Deleted messages and other data is retrievable only till the time that the memory which initially stored that particular message has not been overwritten.

Once the rewrite takes place your invaluable data is lost forever. Thus, speeds is the key. If there has been a deletion by mistake then get things restored as soon as possible for greatest chances of recovery.

Also Read: How to Perform a Nandroid Backup and Restore it to your Android Device

3 Useful Programs that Help in Restoring Data

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The SMS+Contacts Recovery from Coolmuster is an easy to use program that as the name suggests is capable of retrieving lost messages and contacts as long as their memory has not been rewritten. This program works on both Macs and PCs.

The Android Data Recovery software (Dr. Fone) by Wondershare is a highly versatile program that can help retrieve pretty much everything that is stored on your smartphone. The program works on both Mac and PCs. This program allows a free trial that can come in handy for such retrieval.

For data recovery on Android devices, there is another retrieval program, aptly named Android Data Recovery, which is used to retrieve deleted messages, photos, contacts, and videos from a phone. The entire process is very intuitive and fast.

All these programs need to be downloaded onto a computer for the recovery to work. If you do not want to use a computer and recover data solely with your mobile phone then that would require you to root your handset and shell out some money for paid apps. It is a better idea to stick to these computer-based retrieval programs that are very effective and easy to use.

Steps to Recover Deleted Messages from your Android Phone

There are some standard steps that need to be followed with a few intuitive tweaks here and there for the message restoration process. These steps remain the same no matter which program you decide to work with.

Here’s a helpful video that charts the steps below using the Wondershare Dr. Fone software.

Get the retrieval app: Download one of the Message Retrieval programs listed above and open them on your computer.

Enable USB Debugging on your Android Phone: Go to the ‘Developer Options’ under the main phone settings. If this option is not visible then tap on ‘About Phone’ and then scroll down till you find the ‘Build Number’ option. Tap on this repeatedly till you get developer access. Once this happens, go back to the Settings menu and you would find ‘Developer Options’ listed there.

Under Developer Options tick the check box that allows you to enable ‘USB debugging’ or ‘Android Debugging’.

Connect the mobile to your computer and start scanning: Once you have connected your handset to your computer with a USB cable, you would be able to scan the entire phone memory to check the accidental deletions that you want to restore. The scanning might take some time as there is a lot of memory that needs to be surfed. A program like Wondershare Dr.Fone for Android allows you to scan not only messages but also deleted photos, videos, and contacts.

Analyze the data: Once the scan is complete, all the data would be present for your perusal. Anything that has not already been overwritten would be available here for restoration. Select whatever data or messages you want to be restored.

Restore messages back on the phone: After analyzing and selecting the data that needs to be restored back to the mobile’s memory, click on the restore button that is present on the app window. That is all it takes to get back all the data that you feared was lost forever. You could also save it on your computer as a backup.

While being able to rectify accidental mistakes is a great privilege there are times when important things get lost forever due to overwriting of the phone memory. Thus, it is a good practice to take a backup of all the important data on your phone. This might sound like a lot of work but is actually a fairly easy process that can be accomplished in minutes.

See Also: Titanium Backup: The Complete Backup and Restore App for Your Android Device

How to Backup your Messages

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There is an app named SMS Backup and Restore which is super easy to use. There are no hidden complications here, the app does exactly what its name suggests; it takes a backup of all your messages and restores them back to your mobile as and when required. This is a free app.

While taking a backup through the app you can provide the target destination which could be somewhere in the local device itself or in some other networked storage like the cloud.

The backup does not take long but if you would rather not spend your time doing it then just schedule periodic backups which would continue in the background without you ever having to think of them.

In Conclusion

These are some of the ways to make sure that you never lose anything of value from your cell phone. The one thing to remember while trying to retrieve deleted data is that speed is the key.

Unless you carry out the retrieval process soon after the deletion there is a good chance that your lost data may remain lost forever. A permanent copy of the retrieval programs on your desktop is a good investment in the interest of the invaluable data stored on your smartphone.

Further Reading: Android Backup Without Root: The 4 Best Options For Your Device

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