V2: Text message SMS recovery from broken Droid, after Verizon transfer to new one

I need help with something that seems like it might be fairly common, but I don't find any threads addressing it. I first posted this Dec. 5, and it has been viewed 90 times, but no response. So I'm rephrasing to simplify my question, and placing it in a different forum section.


I have the original Droid. The touch screen broke (I could no longer unlock it), so I went to Verizon to get a replacement. My broken phone had hundreds of old text messages and contacts. I had never done anything to back them up, wrongly assuming that the connection with Google would take care of all that. The Verizon staff explained that, thanks to the Google connection, the contacts would transfer over to the new phone, but the text messages would not transfer over, and they did not know of any way to recover or archive the text messages on the broken phone.

I have kept the old phone in hopes that there is a way to recover and archive those old text messages.

when Verizon set up my new phone, they moved over the battery and SD memory card from the old phone. So my old phone does not have an SD memory card, unless I were to take it out of my new phone and move it over, or insert a blank one (which I would need to purchase).

At this point I've been using my new phone for several months, and it has thousands of new text messages, dozens of new contacts, etc. so I don't want to disturb it.

Thus, I don't really want to "restore" the old messages to my new phone. That seems to rule out the SPRecovery option. I'd like to simply archive the messages onto my computer. Is there a way to do this?

And if I do get the text messages off the old phone somehow, what is the best way to put them into a usable archive format – ideally something like the Gmail SMS folder, so I can read them somewhat easily?

Many thanks for any help with this!