Most people consider SMS to be extinct feature from the early days of cellphone. But these days SMS have gained popularity for informational and security purpose rather than personal communication. SMS helps provide OTPs (one-time authentication passwords) from various banking and Ecommerce apps to validate payments and purchases. Other information like cell plan validity, orders details, travel information and of course offers, are still received via SMS. On an average, a user receives approx. 10 SMSs every day, most of which get deleted even without being read, alongside personal communications that also get lost in the crowd.
On other hand checking all messages in your SMS inbox, with the presumptive mindset that most of them are not important, is a tiring task and occupies both time and energy. But it does remind me of the number of emails we also receive every day. But they can be organized with rules being setup in most cases along with a tool as powerful as Thor’s Hammer (Report as Spam & Unsubscribe) that brings the next brainstorming question to our minds:
Can we organize our SMS Inbox?
The answer would be “Yes, to a certain extent”. The default SMS apps are obviously incapable of performing such a feat but there are a few apps available today which can sort your SMSs. The functionality of these apps cannot be compared to Outlook or Gmail, but they do assist the user in sorting the SMS texts to a certain level. To make things more easy for you, we’ve prepared a list of some great tools you can use:
1.SMS Organizer – Clean, Blocker, Reminders & Backup
Publisher: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 4.6
SMS Organizer, a Microsoft Garage Project, helps you focus on only important SMS in your inbox. It is designed to cut through the clutter and provide an enhanced messaging experience. The app’s main interface is divided into three sections namely, texts, reminders and starred messages. The inbox is divided into personal, transactional, promotional, archived, and blocked, and it automatically sorts incoming messages into the appropriate section. It reminds the user of upcoming travel, movies and bill payments using information in the SMS through timely reminder cards and notifications. Other features include, Dark Theme, Signature, rules for auto deletion of messages, especially OTPs, which get deleted after three days, offline functional capability and backup to google drive. The main drawback with SMS Organizer is that you can’t use it outside of India. As for availability outside of India, Microsoft’s Senior Program Manager Nikhil Verma said that there is a “lot of interest.” Microsoft is “continuing to gather user feedback before making any decisions,”
Download here
- Smart SMS Organiser
Publisher: Super SMS
It is a smart SMS App which sorts and analyses all the messages and bifurcates them as Spam or Important. Instead of cryptic sender-id like AM-CANBNK, it shows the sender’s real name and logo to clear confusions. It also allows the user to copy the messages with a double tap and send the message to spam with a long tap. The Main interface contains three unique categories which include ‘All event’ which captures event data like Train/Flight/Bus/Movie booking related information from user’s SMSs and displays them as Scheduler, ‘Passbook’ which calculates all the bank transactional messages and acts as a mini wallet app managing user’s money and finally ‘Coupons’ which displays a list of active coupons. It also has other features like Signature, Backup and restore and starred messages.
- SMS Manager Pro, SPAM Filter
Publisher: Mart Software Communication
Rating: 4.2
This app allows the user to select a message and choose to move it in the spam box which would then simultaneously move all the messages from the same sender in the spam box. The user then can delete all the messages in spam box. Once added, the next incoming messages would automatically find their way into the spam box. This app also allows the user to set keywords which would send all the SMSs with the matching criteria move directly into the spam box. There is a security feature which can assist the user to set passwords for SMS Box, Spam Box or for Settings. It is quite efficient for removing the spam SMSs but does not have the feature to organize the SMSs into separate folders.
- Reos SMS: Android messenger
Publisher: Cube26 Developer Communication
Rating: 4.3
Once Installed and selected as Default app, Reos SMS segregates all the user’s messages into Personal, Transactional and Promotional folders. The user can also move the messages between these three folders. The settings allow the user to change the notifications options like sound, vibration tone etc along with enabling the option of receiving delivery report. It also allows the user to block (Spam) or mute contacts and star any message inside any chat thread which can be found easily under starred messages. Finally, it has a WhatsApp like feature which allows the user to send contacts, images, location and audio along with simple text.
- Inbox Organizer – Backup, Folders, SMS
Publisher: AppSmartz Communication
Rating: 4.1
Inbox Organizer is a SMS organizer App which allows the user to create folders and sort the SMSs into them. There are five default folders but more can be created and renamed as per user’s discretion. The user would find the inbox, sent messages and folders tabs on the home screen. Other options include Back and Restore on google drive, delivery reports and share the message via other apps installed on phone. The user can click on a message and it opens in an email view with options to delete, forward, move to folder, share and finally move to next message. It is designed for people who still love SMSs the old way which would be similar to Nokia phone displaying all the incoming SMS messages in Inbox Folder. It is an almost perfect app with the feature of auto segregate of spam messages missing which can be found on other apps.
Organizing our cellular messages is one of many features which are yet to be explored. With the advent of instant messaging apps, the significance of SMS messaging is on fall. But this simple yet powerful facility can never be completely out of our lives until we use the cellular phone service. Keeping that fact in mind, we can always explore the possibilities of creating better apps which would appeal to the users to keep Short Messaging Service alive for years to come.
