Android: looking for good/working way to text from computer

[nite_monkey]

As the title suggests, I'm looking for a good way (that actually works) to send and receive sms and mms from my computer. I spend most of my time at home sitting in front of my computer, so why not be able to text from my computer. So far I have tried Airdroid, which kind of worked, but wouldn't display picture messages, and I have also tried mightytext, but its kind of bugy, and half the time won't show my messages in the web interface.

[Stoic Joker]

If you know the cell target's carrier you can email phonenumber@carrierdomain. We do it at work all the time.

[nite_monkey]

Then I'm sending texts from my email, and not from my phone number. I did that when I was using a dumb phone to get ringtones onto my phone. I'm testing out an app called remote keyboard, which lets me use a telnet client on my computer, and anything I type in that client shows up on my phone. I'm perfectly fine with this, because that means I can use my computer's keyboard for more than just text messaging.

[mouser]

this is an interesting idea.. is there an android app that will monitor an email address and perform actions based on received emails?  if so you could set up something where you EMAILED a designated mail account of yours, and your phone would receive the email that would instruct it to send an sms with the specified contents..

[Ath]

^That would be perfectly doable using Tasker or AutomateIt, see the threads that kilele has started recently on similar subjects for links

[Deozaan]

Google Voice/Google Hangouts. I use this to send and receive texts and calls from all my Android devices and from my PC.

Or DeskSMS by Koushik Dutta aka ClockworkMod (scroll down):

http://www.clockworkmod.com/

[Vurbal]

Admittedly this would be overkill if you only need the SMS interface, but PDANet works nicely for this.  Or at least it did back when I used it a few years back.

[nite_monkey]

I leave bluetooth on all the time (so that I don't have to turn it on when I get into my car since I use my phone to stream music because live radio has to many ads), so I think I might just find a good cheap bluetooth keyboard to use while I'm at home. That way I don't have to install any extra apps on my phone... to bad there isn't synergy for android

[tsaint]

Yes, I think so, along with lots of other possibilities....  see IFTTT (IfThisThenThat)

this is an interesting idea.. is there an android app that will monitor an email address and perform actions based on received emails?  if so you could set up something where you EMAILED a designated mail account of yours, and your phone would receive the email that would instruct it to send an sms with the specified contents..

-mouser (November 08, 2014, 03:49 AM)

[IainB]

Reading this thread, I wondered whether a newer version of some BVRP software might do what seems to be wanted in the OP.
Some years ago whilst working in SE Asia, I bought a Bosch GSM908 cellphone. It got damaged, so I bought a newer model Bosch 909DS (dual waveband) and as I also wanted to be able to download/upload phone numbers between PC and phone, I bought some PC software in New Zealand that was sold under the Bosch label with the name Data Interface by BVRP Software (bvrp.com).
Here's a PDF of the User Guide that came with the software: Bosch - Data Interface Eng.pdf

The software provided for:

• Fax
• GSM
• Data File Transfer
• Terminal emulation

- via an RS232 interface. I got Data Access enabled to my NZ Vodafone account and found that I could set up the phone as a modem to the PC and connect through it to an NZ dial-up ISP for Internet access. It was slow, but it worked. All in all, it was a pretty good piece of software.
However, the most useful functionality for me was that, regardless of what country/network I was using, I could "use the PC as though it was the phone" - i.e., I could download stored and incoming SMS messages from the phone, to my PC, and send/receive SMS messages directly from/to the PC, via the phone. So I could type in my SMS messages on my laptop, which I found far more efficient than all that finger-and-thumb texting, and, furthermore, I could retain all the data on my laptop - which was regularly backed up.

I haven't come across any software quite as comprehensive or effective as this since.

[skwire]

As the title suggests, I'm looking for a good way (that actually works) to send and receive sms and mms from my computer.

-nite_monkey (November 07, 2014, 09:30 PM)

I use MyPhoneExplorer for this purpose (for SMS, at least).

http://www.fjsoft.at/en/
https://play.google....rer.client&hl=en

[Arizona Hot]

But is there anything that can do something like this with TracFones?

[dspelley]

How about Pushbullet?

https://www.pushbullet.com/

[brahman]

+1 for MPE - My Phone Explorer - it really is an amazing app once you understand all the things that you can do with it.

[4wd]

+1 for MPE - My Phone Explorer - it really is an amazing app once you understand all the things that you can do with it.

-brahman (January 29, 2017, 01:25 PM)

Just watch out if your phone book contains entries with Unicode, then the characters will be munged to ?????????? if you edit the entry ... I just tried.

It was then synced across all my devices faster than I could say WTF 

It'll import fine, just don't edit any entry containing Unicode.

[brahman]

Try the latest version - this may have been fixed.

MPE now (since version 1.88 which was published a few weeks ago) also has a device independent database to sync several phones with each other.