If permissions were not an issue, I could solve this by simply reading the content of SMS: Get number of unread sms
However this requires READ_SMS permission, and this is very broad one — and I would not like any user freaking out. After all getting the number of unread SMSes is pretty benign operation.
So — how can I just read statistics of SMS (total messages, unread messages) without triggering any permission conflict?
That is not possible. You need to have READ_SMS permission to do any operations involving the SMS’es.