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Click here to download momail 0.1

What is momail?

Momail (“mobile” + “mail”) is a program to retrieve, browse and backup sms from your phone. For doing that, it uses bluetooth and the Python For S60 shell which, as the name suggests, is available only for phones running Symbian S60. If your mobile runs it (check at if it does, and which version), installing Python For S60 is very simple: you can find the .sis files (you need both PythonForS60… and PythonScriptShell…) at: , just send them to the mobile and install them.

Last version of momail can always be found at

Who's the author?

Pietro Battiston -


You need (apart from a phone with Python Script Shell and a computer with a dongle) the following software on your computer: - pygtk - bluez - python-dbus

Those are available on all main Linux distributions.


If momail gives errors at startup, try the following:

  1. if it shows (at least some part of) the graphic interface:
    • disconnect
    • start momail, activate the connection from the mobile, but DON'T press “connect” in momail's connection dialog: press instead “Cancel”
    • in a terminal, run “cu -l /dev/rfcomm2”
    • press “Enter” a couple of times
    • press Ctrl+D
    • retry starting momail
  2. if it doesn't show anything: execute '“sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart”' and retry

The future & wishes

Frankly speaking, I don't think the Linux/Open Source world needs a new program for managing phones: it needs that the existing ones (basically opensync and gammu) really work. Unfortunately, both projects seem to have huge lack of organization or, more probably, manpower, which made me realize that years could have passed before I could backup my sms with them. That's why in I wrote momail, in my spare time during a couple of days.

I'd like to say “I'll better integrate my code in those apps”, but this may be false too: because those aren't python programs, and as far as I know don't support python plugins, and also because the method of starting first the python console on the mobile, on which momail relies totally, is not totally orthodox (though notice that gammu's gnapplet is in the end a not much different method, and it probably supports a smaller number of mobiles).

All this to say that I'm not planning to spend much time improving momail. There are only a couple of things that I may want to do, and on which some feedback/requests may activate me:

  • ability to browse backups
  • maybe maybe maybe, ability to also copy contacts, tasks… if on the Python for S60 documentation you see that something can be retrieved, then I can probably implement it without huge effort.

I _don't_ think I will ever:

  • add the ability to restore backups, or in general to modify anything on the phone
  • add the support for other methods/protocols than the python bluetooth console


Momail uses the “Inbox” object described in the PyS60 Library Reference (PythonForS60_1_4_5_doc.pdf, which can be found here: ). The documentation presents the following methods do retrieve information about an sms:

content() - the text of the sms
time() - the time of (I suppose) receival
address() - the address of the sender/receiver. This is a name if the sender
            is known in the address book, a telephone number otherwise.
unread() - the status (read/unread) of the sms. But I don't care about.

I'm not really convinced this is all the information stored in the sms database of a Symbian phone. For instance, I would have expected that the number _and_ possibly the name of the sender of an incoming message would be saved.

Anyway, that's all I can get. Just wanted to alert that I'm not 100% sure that if you backup your sms with momail and then delete them you're not loosing some (hardly useful) information.

momail.txt · Ultima modifica: 2010/10/23 22:00 (modifica esterna)