[Freedombox-discuss] Synchorize (or backup/save to computer) SMS, voice mail, pictures, etc...

[A. F. Cano]

Hi,

I've been very happily using radicale to synchronize the contact list,
calendar and to to list (required the Tasks android app, that I got from
F-droid) between computers running KDE (Korganizer, Kaddressbook) and
the old android phone (galazy S/ Cyanogenmod android 4.2.2 with nothing
google on it) using the radicale server on the FreedomBox.

Now I'd like to also synchronize (if possible) the SMS text messages and
the voice mail messages.  Is this possible with Radicale?  If so it
would be ideal, but I see no indication that this is possible.

I have tried SMSbackup+ but it requires an imap server.  Since the
FreedomBox has no mail server, I tried it with an internal dovecot
imap server but it doesn't work.  I probably did something wrong but
I get no error messages, just "No items found" even though I have a
few text messages.  Has anyone used SMSbackup+?  Everything I've found
on the web is at least 4 years old.

How are voice mail messages handled in android?  Is it possible to
synchronize/save them to a computer, by sending them as an email
attachment for instance?  Are there some android apps that can deal
with voice mail messages, hopefully compatible with radicale?

After the experience I've had with verizon (just dumped them and I
lost 17 messages that might have been important, and the tech support
person just about laughed at me when I asked how I could recover them)
I'm never again leaving my messages or other data hostage and
inaccessible in someone else's computer.

The only way that I was able in the past to get and archive the voice
mail messages (on a non-smart phone) was to connect the earphone output
to the audio in of a computer and record everything as I went through
the voice mail maze ("Press 1 to play the message, 7 to delete it",
etc.)  An experience I don't want to repeat.

I have tried kdeconnect, but it requires that the phone and the KDE
machines be on the same network.  I have the phone set up in a different
network so kdeconnect won't do.

I have found MAXS but know nothing about it yet.  Since it uses XMPP
and the Freedombox has an XMPP server... Is anyone using it? how
exactly? What can it do?

I have installed syncthing, but it's not yet configured.  It appears to
require quite a bit of configuration and moving around the files
that are going to be synchronized with the phone.  Is there a better
solution to synchronize pictures? notes? preferably in combination with
KDE apps that perform thsse functions.  I have found Kolab Notes for
android but haven't set it up yet.  Anyone using it?  I also found
Orgzly.  Is anyone using this app?  In combination with the Freedombox?

Any other suggestion? Have I missed an obvious (android) app? a KDE app
that is particularly well suited and/or compatible with the Freedombox
apps?

Finally, I've been looking at how to set up a mail server, but it's
quite involved, so I'm not surprised there isn't a solution for that
on the Freedombox.  I certainly would be happy if that happened.

A really heartfelt thank you to the Freedombox developers!

And thank you for reading this far.  Any suggestions will be greatly
appreciated.

Augustine