File manager ActiveFile now backs up and restores your SMSs

Symbian phone file browser ActiveFile opens folders that the built-in file manager of your mobile phone keeps closed and hidden. ActiveFile can send protected files over bluetooth, and comes with a screenshot function, task manager, battery and memory monitors, phone restarter, an option to send fake SMSs to your own phone inbox, and an SMS backup and restore tool.

The latest version of ActiveFile fixes bugs. The best thing about the update: backing up and restoring SMSs with ActiveFile now works!

The "send fake SMS" option had a problem with faking the "sent" date, but that's a thing of the past.

The SMS backup and restore option didn't work at all, but now it is functional. It can back up and restore your inbox, outbox, sent folder, and all your custom message folders.

But the SMS backup/restore function needs some more work. The "ignore duplicate" setting (which you can set to yes or no) always resets itself to "no" on my phones no matter how often I select "yes." And the "backup options" entry in the menu of the SMS backup tool doesn't do anything.

You can choose whether the SMS backup file should be stored on your phone's own memory or on your memory card, but ActiveFile won't let you choose in which folder you'd like the backup to be stored. It doesn't even tell you the location of the backup file, which doesn't really help if you want to copy the backup to your computer, store it online, or send it to another Symbian phone to merge different messaging folders.

You can move, copy, and send the SMS backup files manually if you know where they are, so I searched my phones for them. When I chose to store the backup in "internal memory" the backup file was stored in C:\Data\Others. When I selected "memory card" the file ended up in E:\Others. When I sent the backup file from one phone to another, the two SMS folders were merged perfectly.

A bug that may cause panic: when you restore a large number (hundreds) of SMSs, there's a good chance that Active File will complain about insufficient memory and crash, even if your phone has memory aplenty. Fortunately my messages were restored anyway, but having to close a crashed copy of ActiveFile with KillMe is not very reassuring when you're busy rescuing your messages.

The good news is that despite these flaws ActiveFile is able to restore messages in a non-destructive way, i.e. merge two message collections instead of overwriting everything when you restore a backup. Nokia's own PC Suite is unable to do that. Oxygen can backup and restore your SMSs too, but it's a complex procedure and you need a computer for it. And X-SMS only saves the messages from your inbox, not from the other message folders. Backing up and restoring messages with ActiveFile is much easier, and it backs up and restores all the message folders of Nokia's Symbian SMS application.

• ActiveFile from Alie Tan

UPDATE:
Good news! Alie Tan, the maker of ActiveFile, says he will improve the SMS backup/restore tool soon.

Maybe I should post some more requests on his forum? Oh wait, I already did ;)