Can you get old text messages from a discarded phone?

January 9, 2021 6:43 PM

The phone was discarded, not the sim card.

I had to throw out an old phone because it stopped working. Now I may need proof of something via the texts that were on that phone. I still have the sim card somewhere. Am I able to regain those texts?

posted by fantasticness to Technology (5 answers total)

Contact your service provider and see if they have copies of your SMS messages. I think they only keep those messages for a few months. If they were encrypted messages (iMessage or WhatsApp) then you are out of luck.
posted by jeffmilner at 6:58 PM on January 9, 2021

Depending on the make and model of the phone the messages may be on the SIM or (more likely) on the phone. Can you advise?
posted by tiamat at 7:30 PM on January 9, 2021

Response by poster: I think they were on the phone. :(

It would be tmobile prepaid
posted by fantasticness at 7:49 PM on January 9, 2021

Was it a feature/flip phone kind of thing or a smart phone? If smart phone was it Android? iPhone? Samsung, LG, Huawei?

(I feel like keeping messages on the SIM was more common in pre-smart phone times, so if this was a feature phone then I think it's worth trying to find the SIM. If it was a smart phone did you maybe have it backed up anywhere?)
posted by mskyle at 7:29 AM on January 10, 2021

When I tried Pulse messaging app for Android and Windows, it imported all my old messages. I don't know where it got them from; my impression was that it wasn't from my phone, but I don't remember why, sorry. It might be worth trying.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 3:28 PM on January 10, 2021