Mobile Devices

iPhone - very high data usage (email stuck in outbox)

iPhone 5

A user managed to hit O2 1GB data usage limit on iPhone 5 in two days! He was normally using under 100MB per month and could swear that he hadn't done anything unusual in these 2 days.

After checking that backups and updates over cellular were disabled and there were no suspicious apps running, I added additional data package and reset iPhone data counter. In couple of hours I checked the iPhone again and to my surprise it had already uploaded over 40MB of data over cellular network.

iPhone stuck on Apple logo

Apple logo

iPhone stuck in an infinite reboot cycle: starts, gets to the screen with Apple logo and spinning circle, then after a few minutes reboots again.

Phone was fixed by putting it into a recovery mode and doing a restore via iTunes. Be aware that this resets the phone to factory defaults which deletes all apps and data from the iPhone. This also updates iOS to the latest version so if you had a jailbroken phone it will restored to factory iOS version.

Gmail email flagging gone in iOS 6

After upgrading iPhone 4S to iOS 6 noticed that there is no more Flag email option in Gmail account. The only option is Mark as Unread.

Mark as Unread in iOS

Gmail account was set up as Exchange rather than default IMAP account. After checking account settings I found that there is nothing in Domain field. Adding google as a domain initially seemed to have resolved the issue, as Flag option was back where it should be.

Export iPhone SMS messages

iPhone doesn't have any native way to save or export your SMS messages to a computer. This can be done using third party tools.

Option 1 - Paid software

Use purpose build, commercial software, such as:

Instructions can be found on developers websites.

Option 2 - Do it yourself

You can extract messgaes from iPhone iTunes backup. This is what most paid software does anyway. Doing this yourself involves few more steps, but is not too complicated. Here are exact step by step instructions:

Extract SMS messages from iTunes backup:

Connect your iPhone to iTunes and perform a backup.
Navigate to iPhone backup folder on your PC. Depending on Operating System it can be following locations:
- Windows 7 / Vista: C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
- Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup
- MAC OS X: User\Library\Application Support\Mobile Sync\Backup
You will see one of more folder with long ID name, such as d34fde66ba898c63212ef6640ef94073b00a346c. If there is more than one folder, go inside one with the latest Date Modified.
You fill see large number of files long long ID numbers. Find one with name 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 and copy it to your desktop.
This is where all your SMS messages are saved. File is SQLite3 database. If you open it with a notepad you can actually see all your messages, however they won't be in an easily readable format.

Export messages from SQLite database:

Again, there are two ways of doing this. Both are free this time:

Go to www.iphone-sms.com upload your 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 file and download exported data in Excel, PDF or HTML format. This is easiest way to get data exported and it is presented in nicely readable format.
If this doesn't work or you worried about security of uploading your SMS file, you can extract data yourself, although it won't be in such a nice format:
- Download sqlite3.exe. More info and latest versions here.
- create folder sms on your C: drive, and move sqlite3.exe and 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 files there.
- rename file 3d0d7e5fb2ce288813306e4d4636395e047a3d28 to sms
- open command prompt and run following commands (one by one):
  cd c:\sms
  sqlite3.exe sms
  .output exported.txt
  select * from message;
  .exit
- All messages will be exported to exported.txt file.

Tested on:
Windows 7 PC
iPhone 5 with iOS 5.1.1