Yahoo! thinks it’s a cool feature to provide online backup for SMS. However, one can easily store upto 400 messages on Nokia 6600 and other such handsets. The SMS churn rate and the rate at which new SMSs are created, is so high that I have hardly seen anyone backing them up not even to their PC.
I was tempted to test the Yahoo! SMS backup service. I signed up and got a confirmation code by SMS, upon entering the same, a new folder “SMS Backup” is instantly created in Yahoo mail. I then forwarded a SMS to 82438243 and even after an hour I don’t see the SMS in my mail folder. However, within 2 minutes I received a service reply saying that I was billed Rs3.0 for the value added service SMS. I have written to Yahoo! and we will see whether it gets into my “SMS Backup” folder.
You might also want to try AirCel’s SMS backup currently available in Chennai and Tamilnadu. I am not sure of the rates here.
SMS Backup , Mobile India , Yahoo India
Update: After 24 hours, I still don’t see the SMS in my SMS Backup folder of Yahoo Mail. I am not going to use this service ever again.
Hi Chetan,
your review is interesting. The Yahoo! Service is very similar to something we have been doing for a couple of years in the UK market: http://www.treasuremytext.com where users save their messages online (for free). We aim our product mainly at UK users although it does work globally. (You only pay the cost of forwarding your message to our number, not an additional charge).
If anyone is interested in seeing what people save, we also allow users to make their messages public. Mainly the users are interested in saving messages ‘away from the handset’; often they are relationship based messages, we have many loyal users who save many many SMS over a long period of time. You’d be surprised, plenty of people do wish to save or back up their SMS content, for posterity, in case they loose their handset, if they upgrade handsets etc etc.
By the way “Treasuremytext 2.0” is launching soon in more international markets.
Katie,
That’s really kewl. This means Indian customers can use your service as it costs Rs3.0 (the same amount Yahoo charged us) to send an international SMS. I will check it out and then write the review.
I am from Yahoo and i am sorry that Chetan has not been able to use the service successfully.
Some Mobile service providers have trouble in reliably forwarding messages to Yahoo and other networks. The message in this case did not reach the Yahoo network.
I would request you to contact your mobile service provider about the problem. We still have a long way to go to before all mobile service operators in India achieve fairly high reliability levels in transferring SMS messages.
The Value Added Service (VAS) charges are fixed by mobile operators and Yahoo has little control over this. It is the same charge for all services.
Hopefully these prices will come down over the next few years.
Hi Chetan,
I have recently started using the SMS Backup service — more as a novelty than anything else.
So far, ALL the messages I’ve forwarded for back up have reached my Yahoo account within minutes.
Like Sai (from Yahoo) has said, its got a lot to do with the efficiency of the mobile service provider’s network too !
And yes, I agree with Katie when she says that its after all a “backup” service which safeguards you against accidentally losing your important messages 🙂
Ciao,
KV
i am not finding my sended sms in my sms backup folder
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