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Micromat, makers of TechTool Pro, have released a new desktop application entitled Syphone that allows Apple iPhone owners to view, save and backup their SMS messages.

The free Mac utility does not alter the iPhone in any way. With Syphone you can now archive and view SMS conversations, including those that have been deleted from the iPhone. The latest version 0.99b11 features many bug fixes including:

• Connecting and disconnecting a phone without syncing with iTunes no longer causes a crash.
• iPhones with the same name but different serial numbers are now available in the UI and work as expected.
• Resizing the Syphone window no longer causes odd splash screen behavior.
• The helper application should no longer enter a CPU-intensive state when not syncing or otherwise doing work.

New features include:

• Preliminary PDF export capability: I know it has some bubble alignment problems, hence why it's "preliminary."
• More informative status text, including when an iPhone has been connected to the computer, also informing users of the "sync-on-disconnect" policy.
• Preference panel now includes information on when Syphone was last synced to the iTunes snapshot database.

Micromat president Jeff Baudin said, "Syphone represents our first endeavor into the iPhone product market. This was a function we all wanted for ourselves and so we decided to make the best SMS archiving utility we could." On the release and future of the product he added, "We decided to make Syphone free so we could gauge what kind of appeal products like this might have. If the response is good, we might venture into making a pro version that has many additional features. There's quite a bit of functionality we can bring to iPhone users without needing to modify or install software onto the iPhone."

Syphone is available as a free download from Micromat and runs on Macintosh computers running Max OS X 10.4 or above. No confirmation yet on Leopard compatibility.