SGH-a707 report

[MrE]

Hi. I'm trying out BPE with the Samsung SYNC, A.K.A. SGH-a707.
I wanted BPE so I could archive all my SMS messages.

The bottom line is that BluePhoneElite archiving of my text messages is unreliable because of some lingering bugs.

http://mirasoftware.com/BPE2/phones/ says:
...
Text Messages
Phone lacks required features.

Phone may reboot when reading SMS.
Appears to happen either when internal SMS count reaches a certain number or there is a certain type of SMS on the phone. Try deleting SMS from the phone.

My experience: BPE accessed 30 SMS messages; I think this was the 30 that were on the SIM chip. (I'm not sure if there were more than 30 SMS messags on the SIM chip; I don't think so.) There are about 400 messages in phone memory, including some WAP/SMS push messages. I 'moved' the 30 messages that appeared to a folder on my computer. They appeared in the 'on my computer' folder, but remained on the phone. I deleted them from the phone. I was hoping I could get BPE to see more of the messages on the phone. But whatever I do, I can't get it to see any of the SMS messages on the phone any more. I moved some SMS from the phone memory to the SIM chip, but it made no difference. BPE sees no messages in any of my phone's folders.

I have NOT had the reported problem with the phone rebooting when reading SMS. Before I tried BPE, I'd see it reboot itself about once every few months; I guess that it is able to detect that its hung and reboot itself.

Not keen to pay for a product that doesn't have the main feature I want, but I thought the info would be helpful to the developers.
Maybe there's something I could try to fix the problem. (I'd like to avoid deleting messages unnecessarily, however. I can move messages between folders, and between phone and SIM memory) Perhaps it would help to start afresh, e.g. by logging in as a different user?

I see there's a new release with a Samsung tweak. Moving from BluePhoneElite2_3078.dmg to BluePhoneElite2_3143.dmg.
Trying it now. No change.

[MrE]

I decided to buy the product despite the bugs.

I became interested and bought it mainly to transfer and archive SMS messages.
Sometimes it didn't work at all for that. Once (and ONLY once), I was able to transfer over 100 messages from the phone's main memory.
(I tried reinstalling and wiping all settings on my Mac, but couldn't make it happen again.

I've been using it for a few months now. I've been able to transfer messages from the SIM reliably. But when messages come in, sometimes they go onto the SIM, and sometimes into phone memory. Usually it's the latter. And there's no way to move multiple messages from phone memory to the SIM; they have to be moved one at a time.

I can't figure out why they go onto the SIM, vs to phone memory. I guess I can let the Phone memory fill up, and try to transfer messages often enough to keep the SIM from filling up.

WORKAROUND #2:
Another annoying bug pops up when trying to move messages by dragging them. Often, it doesn't work. It ONLY works if you move the mouse horizontally first, after picking up the messages, and then move it to the destination. At least I figured out what the problem is and a workaround.

[MrE]

Oh, one more thing. The bugs around text messages seem to be caused by specific text messages.
I can't tell exactly what it is about 'em, but I think the program needs extra code to handle unexpected formatting in text messages, such as quotes, control characters, tabs, or what have you.

BluePhoneElite MUST respect the interoperability principle :

Be strict in what you send and lenient in what you accept

[MrE]

Ok, so BPE trips up when displaying or allowing me to transfer text messages ('SMS').
The phone inbox, as shown in BPE, indicates there are no SMS. But the phone is full of SMS.

BUT: BPE has a (new?) chat feature that shows new SMS chat discussions.

I JUST DISCOVERED/NOTICED: IN THESE CHAT WINDOWS APPEAR LOTS OF SMS - ONES THAT DON'T APPEAR IN THE INBOX IN BPE.
SO THE MESSAGES ARE SUCCESSFULLY BEING COMMUNICATED OVER BLUETOOTH TO BPE. BPE HAS RECEIVED THE SMS BUT IS FAILING TO DISPLAY THEM PROPERLY IN THE INBOX.