How to restore text messages from backup made on Sony Xperia TX?

[_Alexey]

Hello everyone.

Here is my problem:

My old Xperia TX is encrypted. So "Xperia Transfer Mobile" app and "PC Companion" are not working here.

Internal "Backup & restore" app exist on both phones - my new Z5 and TX and serves the same way - it can back up all text messages (and other data which I don't need to transfer) and it does work with encrypted phone! First it asks for password for decrypting and then works fine. I'm saving my backup to SD card. I'm inserting SD card to Z5 and trying to restore with same data but... BnR app can't see saved data on SD card!

I made some researches on content of backups and I see they using different formats for backups. Different files structure, different files contents and different metadata format.

So my question is - how to transfer all text messages from encrypted Xperia TX to Xperia Z5 without 3rd party utilities? Common, I'm almost done it, but surprisingly restore utility on new smartphone cannot read data from previous version of the same vendor...

Here are contents of backups on both phones. Files from TX are on the left, files from Z5 are on the right:

[Uliwooly]

@_Alexey

The best way I can think of is to sync the messages to Gmail or use a SMS backup app > create a backup on your TX > download the same app on your Z5 > transfer the backup file 

Alternatives on How to backup Xperias

http://talk.sonymobile.com/thread/36355

[_Alexey]

uliwooly , sync SMS to Google account would be ideally. Is there a way to do this without 3rd party software?

[Uliwooly]

@_Alexey

You will need a third party app, check the link above

[knewt68]

Hey, did you find the recommendation useful? I am in the same boat as I want to reset my encrypted xperia SP but I have no way to make sure that the backup will work when trying to restore after defaulting the phone. Should a password being asked when trying to restore from this backup? I have been able to test that the backup and restore utility on the phone can see new backup files after deleting and copying them back in the folder \.semc-fullbackup. The only thing I would like to know for sure is that when phone is reset and no decryption available whether is going to simply prompt for a password to open the encrypted backup or if it may fail. My main concern are the sms which I don't want to manage via gmail as this will not put my sms back where they were or otherwise all third party software that claims to do this is are at a cost and no guarantee given that it will work.

[_Alexey]

xsp03 , with SMS I gave up and used 3rd party app, which I found at Store with good rating. I'm concerning about privacy of my messsages too, so I turned off WiFi after installing that app, saved all messages to a local file and then deleted app while being still offline. Messages are saved into plain XML file. Restored that file on Z5 same way, so no posibility of leaking my data.

I think that if you making backup of encrypted data, it saved in file already decrypted from phone, but encrypted with PIN just for securing that backup. So you don't need same password from old phone to restore it, only backup PIN.

I can't say about backup of any other data. All I needed was SMS and notes from Notes - evernote compatible app, but it was excluded from phones after TX model. Problem was I saved them locally, not to evernote account and there was no way to move them to Evernote server. I gave up there too and simply send them to e-mail as plain text.

Sad fact is that moving from Xperia to Xperia was so difficult

[knewt68]

For other data is not an issue as I could save it manually via PC anyway, even the contact list in CSV format has not been encrypted and should be compatible wth any smartphone. What I will probably do is to give it a try and in case cannot decrypt the backup from restored phone I will use the third party backup like advised with you.