How to recover deleted text messages

Learn how to quickly and simply restore deleted text messages to your mobile phone or iPhone.

You’ve probably always assumed that once you delete a text message from your mobile phone it’s gone for good, right?

Wrong, because if you’ve accidentally deleted that all important text then this guide can help by walking you through the steps required to restore a deleted text message.

Restoring mobile phone texts

The internet contains lots of misinformation about how to restore mobile phone text messages, or whether it’s even possible. But the fact is that deleted texts can be restored without help from your mobile network operator.

One X(white) £0.00

100 min Unlimited texts

£21.50

Deleted texts can’t be restored from your phone itself. Instead you need to buy a sim card recovery tool - a relatively cheap gadget (from around £15) that extracts data from mobile phone sim cards, including deleted texts and phone numbers.

Compare prices for sim card recovery tools.

Simply slip your sim into the reader and connect the device into your PC’s USB port. Software included with the gadget - or widely available to download online - should then extract stored and deleted information from the sim and put it on your PC.

However, some manufacturers of sim card recovery gadgets stress that their tools don’t work in all situations. This is mainly because of the sheer number of different mobile phones on the market.

Exactly which texts and so on the gadget retrieves from your phone could also be a little ad-hoc. For example, it might retrieve a text deleted last week but not one deleted several months ago.

Recovering iPhone text messages

Restoring a deleted text message to your iPhone is possible provided you’ve previously “synced” the smartphone with iTunes, as it’s this process that creates an emergency backup of most personal data - texts, pictures, apps and so on - stored on the phone.

iPhone 4 (16GB)(black) £0.00

200 min Unlimited texts

£18.50

But it’s worth noting that reverting to the emergency backup will mean you lose things added to the phone since the last back-up.

However, new apps can be restored by downloading them for a second time - you shouldn’t be charged for a second download - and new pictures saved by dragging them onto your PC’s desktop from the iPhone’s memory.

To restore deleted text messages from your previous iPhone backup, simply:

• Connect the smartphone, via the white cable, with your PC and open iTunes
• Cancel the back-up that automatically starts up when you sync the phone with your PC
• Click on Settings, then General, Reset, Erase All Content
• When prompted, restore your iPhone to the previous back-up.

Compare iPhone 4 deals.

Galaxy S3(blue) £0.00	100 min 500 texts	£26.00
Galaxy S3(blue) £0.00	900 min Unlimited texts	£31.00
Galaxy S2(black) £0.00	300 min Unlimited texts	£20.50

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