Transfer SMS Messages from Nokia (Symbian) to Android

Two months ago, I switched from my Nokia N8 to my new Samsung Galaxy S II handset. Of course, I had to move all my data from the old phone to the new one. Didn't know, however, that switching between Symbian and Android isn't very well facilitated. It was pretty easy to move contacts, pictures and media from Symbian to Android but the complicated part was moving sms messages. I found some helpful methods online such asthis (I suggest you try it first before reading further and trying my method) but unfortunately it didn't work for me because my Ovi Suite version was new and not supported by the Nokia2AndroidSMS application (it failed to extract my messages). So, I had to figure out a different way to do this, which required some coding. I decided to share my method with the world as I'm sure lots of other users faced similar problems. This should work no matter what version of Ovi Suite you got:

1. Connect your Nokia handset and start Nokia Ovi Suite on your PC
2. Create a backup .nbu file (it doesn't matter what you select for backup, as long as it includes messages)
3. Download NBU Explorer (open-source program which allows you to explore .nbu backup files and export them)
4. Run NbuExplorer.exe > File > Open > Browse to your .nbu file and open it
5. Go to the Messages tab and click on "Export Messages" button located above the table on the right pane
6. in the "Save as type" field, select (*.xml) and save the file
7. I wrote a little tool which converts the .xml file to the format accepted by theSMS Backup & Restore Android application. Download XML2Android.exe
8. Save the tool in the same folder where you saved the .xml extracted file
9. Open the command line console (Win7: Start > type "cmd" and press enter)
10. CD to the directory where you saved the files (e.g. CD C:\my_messages\)
11. Execute: XML2Android <yourfile.xml> (e.g. XML2Android my_sms.xml)
12. This will generate a file called AndroidSMS.xml, copy this file to your Android phone
13. On your Android, download the SMS Backup & Restore app from Google Play
14. Now, simply run the app on your phone and Restore your old messages from the generated XML file. You're done!

Note: A user reported that he faced some problems with weird characters in the exported XML file from NBU Explorer. The XML2Android app will report the location of the invalid character(s) so make sure you modify the file using a text editor (I recommend Notepad++) to remove the bad lines and re-run the app against it (to avoid missing messages). Thanks to "Dr. Manjit M" who reported this problem below in the comments.

Note 2: The XML2Android.exe tool requires .Net Framework 3.5 to run, if you have Windows 7 it shouldn't be a problem (you might need to install the required framework on other Windows versions). Also, it is a basic tool which I wrote roughly without capturing any exceptions or false usage... Make sure you use it correctly before reporting any bugs