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Deleting SMS....

Z

Zilliano

Member
Okay, I know I'm idiotic for letting my messages get up so high, but this is my first phone with texting, and beings that it didn't force me to clear the inbox... Well, I didn't, and I have two large threads, once at 900 and one at 1500. How the heck do I delete them? I know HOW to delete, but trying to just makes my phone freeze, in any program I try. Do I have to wipe my phone to make it go away...?
Please, any help is much appreciated.
 
I saw one, but it consisted of people tearing each other apart about 'keeping their phones cleaned' and such. Sorry if avoiding the pool of sharks is out of line, but I really didn't want to be doused with a bucket of 'You're an idiot! Clean out your phone! Hawhawhawhawhaw How stupid are you?' responses with no help involved.
 
I don't really want to delete whole threads. I'd like to have it set so that it would auto delete individual texts after a certain number or date. Like on my old phone. Does anyone know if this is possible?
 
Even using Handcent, I go into the Messages app, long-press the conversation, and delete. Sometimes takes a long time to delete a thread. But it eventually does.
 
Lol I hear ya, I was in the same boat and just wanted to steam about it in a thread. Well I got the same "you need to maintain your phone better" response, and I wasn't even asking for help.
 
It literally took me less than 5 minutes to hard reset my phone and have it back to the state it was with my contacts, wallpapers, ring tones, etc. Phone runs 100% faster now and deleting messages is 1000x faster. This has even given me 40+mb of available phone storage. The phone is running super fast now.

PS. I still believe that this is a problem with the the Android OS and not a user house keeping problem. Something this simple is bogging down our phones, and who knows how many people out there that don't constantly clear their text messages, are getting frustrated with their phones and replacing them with something else. An easy solution with the next update would be to store messages older than 2 days on the storage card, problem solved!
 
DFA1 said:
It literally took me less than 5 minutes to hard reset my phone and have it back to the state it was with my contacts, wallpapers, ring tones, etc. Phone runs 100% faster now and deleting messages is 1000x faster. This has even given me 40+mb of available phone storage. The phone is running super fast now.

PS. I still believe that this is a problem with the the Android OS and not a user house keeping problem. Something this simple is bogging down our phones, and who knows how many people out there that don't constantly clear their text messages, are getting frustrated with their phones and replacing them with something else. An easy solution with the next update would be to store messages older than 2 days on the storage card, problem solved!
Click to expand...

I agree.... Do you know of an app or something that backs up all the settings on the phone, so I just have to run it and not fiddle around with shit once I reset?
 
The biggest thread I ever deleted was only about 160 messages or so, so I really haven't had to wait too long for deletions.

If you want to avoid doing a factory reset, you might want to try this:

- Plug your phone in to USB or a charger
- Set it to never sleep (Settings->Applications->Development->Stay Awake)
- (Optional) use your task manager to close idle apps so the phone is "quiet" and has plenty of free memory.
- Start the deletion of a big thread in your SMS app.

If I recall correctly from other folks posts (who deleted lots of texts), there is some sort of watchdog timer that tries to catch runaway apps, so after a while, you'll get some sort of message asking whether you want to force close your messaging App or Continue... keep choosing Continue every time it asks.

Don't sit there and watch the phone - go and do something else, read a magazine, whatever. Just check it every once in a while, and keep choosing the "Continue" option. (If you want, try and figure out how many minutes elapse between occurrences of this dialog - and then check your phone a little less frequently than that).

My impression was that those folks eventually got all their messages deleted with a bit of patience (but perhaps with hours of waiting on the phone like this).

Or, if you think that doing this is more effort than just wiping your phone and re-constructing (DFA1 said it took him about 5 minutes total), then go ahead and FR your phone instead and re-construct.


BTW, I'm not trying to be an apologist for the phone - this really shouldn't be necessary; but for the moment, "it is what it is".

HTH

eu1
 
I just found an app called "Delete old messages" that does exactly that. You choose a length of time (1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, etc.) for which messages older than that will be deleted. It does take a very long time, but it has a progress bar and shows you exactly how many messages it will delete and how many have been deleted.

Hope this helps!
 
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