Non-threaded SMS?

[batfastad]

Hi everyone

Just got my HTC Desire and one of the things I'm really struggling with is threaded SMS. I can't find any way to go to regular view in the stock SMS program!
That would be an unbelievable omission if it's not possible to use SMS in a normal fashion

It basically means my SMS inbox groups SMS by contact and each conversation has about 20 SMS in threads already and I've only been using it for a few days. I can see that ending up being in the hundreds within a couple of months.
It also means you need many more screen taps to view the message you want to find. I can't find a way to view all the messages I've sent either, I have to go through each conversation.

I just had a look at ChompSMS and Handcent but they're built around threaded/conversation view as well.

Are there any SMS programs out there that don't try and use conversation view?

It's a major drawback that there's not even an option to use a normal SMS view. What particularly strange is that even if you create a new message to someone who's already sent you an SMS, it adds it to an existing conversation. If there's a gap of a few weeks between SMSs I'd hardly say that it constitutes continuing an existing conversation.
I'm finding that it takes so much more time and button pressing to read a particular message.

The only solutions I've found so far have been along the lines of... "I really like threaded SMS so you should too". Not exactly helpful!

Cheers, B

 

[batfastad]

Anyone know how to revert the SMS program to traditional view?

 

[m165]

AFAIK, I don't think you can, or at least, I havn't seen an option in the default app, or Handcent. Best bet is to try looking on the market for an app that does it.

An example of how threaded SMS is faster than the non threaded way, is if I have text 20 people over the past month, and revieved 2000 texts, finding the text I want would be easier, as rather than scrolling through 2000 texts, I can go straight to the person, which eliminates scrolling through loads of texts and cuts it down to a smaller list in just one click.

I understand that not every text relates to the same conversation, but you are communicating with the same person, so it makes sense to have every text to one person in one thread.

Its kind of similar to MSN / Facebook chat. You talk to one person in one window, even if the conversation topic changes. I know it's not quite the same, but along the same concept.

I think it's one of those things to get used to, as most smartphones operate this way now. Give it time and hopefully you'll get used to it. In the mean time, it might be worth requesting an app that can do it (if there isn't one already), as I'm sure it will be possible!

 

[jwmacdon1231]

There is no way to change it.

 

[featherblue]

batfastad,

i too am looking for this. on my last non-android phone, it had the option to switch between conversations and the traditional inbox/sent/outbox, and it was very handy to do both. i did download sms manager app, but it doesn't work so smoothly- i don't like the way that android lovers think i should just get over it!

 

[spirit_seeker]

It basically means my SMS inbox groups SMS by contact and each conversation has about 20 SMS in threads already and I've only been using it for a few days. I can see that ending up being in the hundreds within a couple of months.
It also means you need many more screen taps to view the message you want to find. I can't find a way to view all the messages I've sent either, I have to go through each conversation.

There are options in the setting for auto deleting and limiting the number of text in a thread.

For messaged you want to keep to find later.. lock them (a hard press on the message will bring up that option)

 

[Lukehluke]

I think its threaded only but I personally like that method.

 

[namoroman]

Even dumb phones these days are offering threaded sms. I personally can't imagine not having it anymore. I would rather see everything I've said to or received from my girlfriend together than have random texts from my buddy Gary and my dad lumped in the middle of an inbox only folder. Just my (and many others preference).

 

[batfastad]

Even dumb phones these days are offering threaded sms. I personally can't imagine not having it anymore. I would rather see everything I've said to or received from my girlfriend together than have random texts from my buddy Gary and my dad lumped in the middle of an inbox only folder. Just my (and many others preference).

I'd rather have the option to sort my inbox or show in groups (by contact or by day, date, week, month etc) per my own preference, not your preference.
It's the one thing that really hacks me off about GMail as well.

Just very annoying having to scroll down a thread of 400 messages to find something from a recent one, eg: an address or whatever.

The most unbelievable thing about this is that there's not even an option to have the thread displayed in date descending, rather than ascending!
It would avoid scrolling down through conversations of potentially thousands of messages.

I don't consider "delete old messages" as a solution

 

[amlothi]

Bump, in case anyone knows an app that allows for display of ALL text messages from ALL people by order received (non-threaded).


I just can't believe that there is no "app for that".

 

[Szadzik]

Bump, in case anyone knows an app that allows for display of ALL text messages from ALL people by order received (non-threaded).


I just can't believe that there is no "app for that".

There is. I cannot remember the name, but someone posted some info within the last 3 days. Search this forum and you will find it,

 

[amlothi]

I have searched. There are many people requesting this feature:

http://androidforums.com/android-ap...ormat-texting.html?highlight=non-threaded+sms

http://androidforums.com/incredible...79827-disable-threaded-conversation-view.html

http://androidforums.com/htc-hero/12837-displaying-backing-up-sms-mms-non-threaded-format.html

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/22313-messaging-non-thread-format.html


None of them have any solution. If you find the one that was posted, I would appreciate you letting me know.

The most common response seems to be "There is no way to do that. Why would you want to?"

It doesn't really matter why I want to, does it? Every DUMB phone I've ever had can do this. Why can't my "smart" phone at least give me the choice?

 

[Szadzik]

I have searched. There are many people requesting this feature:

http://androidforums.com/android-ap...ormat-texting.html?highlight=non-threaded+sms

http://androidforums.com/incredible...79827-disable-threaded-conversation-view.html

http://androidforums.com/htc-hero/12837-displaying-backing-up-sms-mms-non-threaded-format.html

http://androidforums.com/motorola-droid/22313-messaging-non-thread-format.html


None of them have any solution. If you find the one that was posted, I would appreciate you letting me know.

The most common response seems to be "There is no way to do that. Why would you want to?"

It doesn't really matter why I want to, does it? Every DUMB phone I've ever had can do this. Why can't my "smart" phone at least give me the choice?

Here it is:

http://androidforums.com/android-applications/232431-unthreaded-sms-app-found.html

You searched for non-threaded and I searched for unthreaded

 

[reaper8]

Here it is:

http://androidforums.com/android-applications/232431-unthreaded-sms-app-found.html

You searched for non-threaded and I searched for unthreaded

good one thanks a ton......a clean contact view too

 

[MyNamesTooLong]

Well now that we found an app...i'm curious as to why you would want 400 unthreaded messages in your inbox???

 

[Freak4Dell]

I'm so confused as how this would prevent scrolling through a ton of messages. If you're looking for something recent, it's going to be easy to find either way. In threaded messaging, it will be one of the first few messages as you start to scroll up. In non-threaded, it would be one of the recent ones in the inbox. If you're looking for something older, you're going to be scrolling through hundreds of messages in a non-threaded inbox, whereas you can limit your search to one particular contact in threaded messaging. If you're looking for something from a recent text from a person that hasn't texted you in a while, then it's much easier to scroll past 10 contacts rather than scrolling past the 300 messages that those 10 other contacts sent you.

If your phone is displaying the oldest messages first (by first, I mean what you first see when you open the conversation, which is technically the end of the conversation), then something is wrong with your phone.

 

[MrDeeJ]

I personally like Threaded SMS because on my previous phone it was non threaded and after awhile it became very difficult to sort through the messages. Now I rarely keep more then a handful of different text chats at a time because I back them up to my Gmail using SMS Backup. Now I can just go to my Gmail and do a word search in my SMS Label and find what I was looking for

 

[barqers]

I'm pretty sure Go SMS just updated and added this option. Plus Go SMS has an option to search your texts for a word or phrase.

 

[operant]

goSMS has themes that are non threaded like you want. But to tell you the truth, try out threaded for a while, I promise you'll enjoy it.

 

[SirMartin]

Hi guys, I made an application for text messages in the traditional view, like the old mobiles.

If it's possible, try, and say me any suggestions, or problems.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.piribisoft.traditionalsms&feature=search_result

This is my first Android app.

Thank you so much.

 

[Thamewolf]

Thanks for linking to the apps! Unfortunately, these don't get to quite what I wanted.
Does anyone know which GO SMS themes are non-threaded?

For those of you who like all the messages for one contact displayed in the same conversation, I believe you are misunderstanding why some people don't like that. It's a privacy issue (as well as a grouping issue).

Let us say that I want to share with a friend a conversation I had with another friend. This particular conversation is not personal, but earlier that day I had a very private conversation that my friend wouldn't want getting out. Now there is no way for me to let someone read one conversation without them seeing the other. Big problem. Yes, I could read it aloud, I could "get used" to the new messaging style and adapt... but why should I have to? I thought the philosophy of the "new" way was complete customization, how I want it when I want it.

What I am looking for is something akin to what Gmail does. Threads are separated into conversations. You don't have every email you've ever sent to someone all in one place. If I want to continue a conversation, I'll reply to that. If I want to start a completely unrelated conversation, I should be able to do so.

I am coming from a Blackberry and really I just want the message system my blackberry had. Unfortunately, Blackberry has terrible app selection and shoddy Internet, so it had to go.

 

[Freak4Dell]

That's hard to do with texts. GMail does that based on the subject, so it's really simple to group that way. With texts, there's no subject, so you can't just group like that. There's no way for the phone to tell when a particular conversation has ended and a new one has begun.

I have no idea how Blackberry does it, but that's pretty damn impressive if they managed to get it to group like that. I'm thinking they don't, though, because if they did, they likely wouldn't be a dying company right now. Or, at the very least, other systems would use the same method.

 

[rokky]

Thanks for linking to the apps! Unfortunately, these don't get to quite what I wanted.
Does anyone know which GO SMS themes are non-threaded?

For those of you who like all the messages for one contact displayed in the same conversation, I believe you are misunderstanding why some people don't like that. It's a privacy issue (as well as a grouping issue).

Let us say that I want to share with a friend a conversation I had with another friend. This particular conversation is not personal, but earlier that day I had a very private conversation that my friend wouldn't want getting out. Now there is no way for me to let someone read one conversation without them seeing the other. Big problem. Yes, I could read it aloud, I could "get used" to the new messaging style and adapt... but why should I have to? I thought the philosophy of the "new" way was complete customization, how I want it when I want it.

What I am looking for is something akin to what Gmail does. Threads are separated into conversations. You don't have every email you've ever sent to someone all in one place. If I want to continue a conversation, I'll reply to that. If I want to start a completely unrelated conversation, I should be able to do so.

I am coming from a Blackberry and really I just want the message system my blackberry had. Unfortunately, Blackberry has terrible app selection and shoddy Internet, so it had to go.

Another major reason for not threading messages is that a number of us are using SMS as a pager replacement. This means many (or most) of our messages are not from people, but from monitoring/alerting tools, and are more like separate "incidents", not ongoing human conversations. Separation of incident alerts is extremely important to dealing with them in short time frames, oftentimes minutes. I cannot do that easily, if at all, with threading of messages by "sender". We set up the tools such that the first part of the message is the subject for quick scanning in a list of such messages.

This is a key reason I still depend on a Windows Mobile phone, and have not switched over to Android as a replacement since the vast majority of my messages are of the pager variety for my job. I just don't text other people that much at all - maybe half a dozen messages in a month vs dozens a day from the work alerting tools on busy days, usually in bursts within a few minutes - i.e. when all Hell is breaking loose for what I support.

WinMob did start offering threaded conversation support as a default about version 6.0 as I recall, and I had to scramble to find the Registry setting to turn that off ASAP. Android cannot be my main phone as long as this unthreaded option is not (readily) available.

YMMV

 

[Freak4Dell]

Still don't see how it matters. The texts have a timestamp attached to them which tells you when they came in. They are arranged in order, which tells you which ones came in first. The subject matter does not change, so you'd still be able to quick scan a list...they would just be in one list instead of a ton scattered all over the place. In fact, as someone whose career will involve emergency pages, if my employer uses texts, I'd prefer to have threaded ones, because then I can go back and find old ones easily in case I need them.

 

[batfastad]

As the original starter of this topic, I'd like to chip in that I do not actually consider it to be "threaded SMS". It's grouped by contact in ascending order of time received. GMail attempts to group e-mails into threads but often fails.

What amazes me is that there's no other view options!
Even grouped by contact in descending order of time received would make more sense than having the newest at the bottom.
I'd love to be able to choose what field the messages are grouped by, or even not displayed in groups at all. Ideally with sent messages separated from those received, perhaps in different folders. Then if I wanted to see all messages grouped by contact, I could do that by going to that contact in contacts.