A simple Python 2.7 app that read all non read messages from Android (rooted) devices. Also a method to mark as read. Fully tested with Android 5.0 device.

android_sms_reader.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
This file contains a method to fetch all unread SMS messages from an android device and returns a dict with result.
@author: Artur Tenorio - arturvt@gmail.com
"""
from datetime import datetime
import os
import pipes
import subprocess


ADB_BINARY = "adb"
SMS_DB = "/data/data/com.android.providers.telephony/databases/mmssms.db"
SELECT_SMS_SQL = 'SELECT _id, address, date, body FROM sms WHERE read=0;'
UPDATE_READ_SQL = 'UPDATE sms SET read=1 WHERE _id in (%d);'


def get_unread_messages():
    """
    Looks for all unread messages and retuns a dict with id, address, date and body message.
    :return list: A list with All unread messages in as dict.
    """
    cmd = 'adb shell "su -c sqlite3 %s %s"' % (SMS_DB, pipes.quote(SELECT_SMS_SQL))
    print cmd
    p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True)
    (out, err) = p.communicate()
    result = []
    for msg in out.replace('\r', '').strip('\n').split('\n'):
        msg = msg.split('|')
        result.append(dict(id=msg[0], sender=msg[1],
                           date_time=str(datetime.fromtimestamp(int(int(msg[2])/1000))), message=msg[3]))
    return result


def set_read_message(msg_id):
    """
    Sets a message identified by msg_id to read.
    :param msg_id:
    :return:
    """
    cmd = 'adb shell "su -c sqlite3 %s %s"' % (SMS_DB, pipes.quote(UPDATE_READ_SQL % msg_id))
    os.system(cmd)


def main():
    result = get_unread_messages()
    for r in result:
        print r


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

how to run this code

it must be a rooted device, and adb must be installed and configured.

Hi, I just tested out the codes. There is an error ? TypeError: a byte-like object is required, not "str"