Is there a way to send out SMS messages for free?

Is there any way to get more detailed stats on the SMS and iMessage messages I send/receive on my iPhone?

• For example, is there a way to see the exact time that messages are sent?  It seems to group messages, and if more than one are within some fixed amount of time, it only gives the time the first one was sent. What about a full list of texts?  Number of texts send to and received from each number/contact? If I wanted to know the times that a certain person wrote to me, is there any way to do that other than scrolling through the entire conversation and noting the times?

• Answer:

  To answer your first question, yes. Swipe left in the messages and the time stamps for each individual message will appear on the right. For the other information, it's possible, but not from the phone itself. I use PhoneView which enables me to view all messages, download and archive them, see how many there were, etc. I'm sure there are other programs that do the same thing.