iPhone OS 2.1: Mail not showing up, progress indicator spins forever
Several users have reported an issue in which the iPhone's Mail app refuses to retrieve new messages from IMAP and POP servers after the OS 2.1 update. In these cases, the progress indicator will spin indefinitely, but no new mail appears. Or, the retrieval process appears complete, but no new mail appears.
As described by one iPhone Atlas reader:
"There seems to be an issue with the new 2.1 firmware and IMAP mail connections. The IMAP account will check mail, go through the process but not update the folder you are viewing (even when there is new mail). The only fix is to hold down the power and home button and shut the phone off. When you turn it back on IMAP works again. But then after a certain period of time (within the same day) the problem repeats itself."
Another reader adds:
"Email app very frequently gets into 'Connecting...' loop mode, and no manner of waiting results in mail arriving. The only solutions that work are force quit the mail app, or reboot phone."
There are three potential fixes for this issue:
- Force-quit the Mail application by holding down the home key for several seconds while the app is active, then re-launch the Mail application.
- Ensure that regional settings are correct in Settings> General> International
- Reset all settings: Settings> General> Reset> Reset All Settings.
Feedback? http://www.iphoneatlas.com/contact.
I changed my preferences to only check manually, then back again, with no change. Did a few restarts (soft and hard).
I haven't had time for other diagnostics. I'll start by deleting and re-adding all the mail accounts and fiddling with other changes. Lots of other things to try - just a shame I have to. Otherwise the 2.1 update has been very good.
Any advice from Apple (support) on how to fix this apart from re-starting the app. Which doesn't seem to solve my issue.
Thanks!!
Niket
I have seen it happen on three different users iPhones with two different makes of mail server. One of the iPhones I completely reset and reloaded the firmware, one of the other users had the iPhone swapped three times by Apple, nothing made a difference. In each case we were using IMAP accounts.
See http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7211911
To summarise what IS going wrong.
1. The iPhone connects as normal on the first pass gets a list of new emails and their subjects, this pass works fine.
2. After finishing the first pass, it goes back to the first (most recent) message and on the second pass asks for a 2-line message summary for each new message which it then displays under the subject line in the list of messages.
The problem is that on the second pass _sometimes_ it will get stuck and then repeatedly keep asking for the summary of the same message, again, and again, and again, hundreds or even thousands of times. I have been able to see this by having access to the mail server at the same time and turning on a debug level log and seeing each request coming in asking for the same message number.
As far as the mail servers are concerned (remember I have seen this on two different makes of mail server) these are all valid requests. Because the iPhone is constantly sending requests it is constantly using the EDGE, 3G or WiFi transmitter and this results in the battery very rapidly being drained and the phone getting very hot.
On the iPhone other than the previously mentioned perpetually spinning activity symbol, if you scroll through the list of latest messages you will see it has stopped filling in the summary at some point.
This is not related to signal strength since it happens even on a full-strength WiFi connection on the same network as the mail server itself. My current theory is that certain emails are of a format/structure as processed by the mail server(s) that causes Mail on the iPhone to choke. This is supported by the fact that when I turned an iPhone off, turned it back on did another email session it would get stuck on the very same email (as I could see on the Mail server log). If one leaves longer gaps between attempts it either might get stuck on a different one, or even not get stuck at all (because by then the list of emails will be different if you as is typical have received more emails). It also only happens on busy email accounts, if you only have 10 emails in your inbox the chances of it happening are extremely low.
Note: Apple Mail in Mac OS X has no problems with the same account and emails, but Apple Mail does not get a 2-line summary in the same way as the iPhone.
I have done every possible thing I can think of or have read about to resolve including: hard reset, soft reset, delete and recreate account (dozens of times), changed number of days to retrieve email from 1 day to no limit, changed from Push to Manual to Fetch every 15 minutes, restore phone from iTunes, reset all settings, I even replaced the device with another identical 16GB iPhone Classic.
I know that I have configured the Exchange account correctly since I am receiving contact info, and I can even search the Global Address List. Also, I can send an email to another account and it is received. Also, to make it more mysterious, yesterday when I woke up, the phone indicated there were 21 unread messages in the Inbox. I was elated, but it was short lived when I opened the Inbox to find it completely bare.
Yes, I have contacted my Exchange admin, who also has an iPhone and is receiving emails via Exchange.
Now, when I connect my Mac OSX 10.5.5 with iTune 8.0 and i try to synchronize my whole computer settings, I have found with sad surprise that I cannot synchronize my email accounts, getting in iTune an error message: the iphone prevented the synchronization. Mmmmm, why is that??? Any clue?
Regards.
Puffo
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by ibis93
March 16, 2009 9:51 AM PDT
- I've discovered the reason for this in some cases and it is not a iPhone problem but rather due to AT&T's inept DNS management. Many IMAP servers require that the forward and reverse DNS for an ip address both resolve and match before they will allow a connection. AT&T has only ip address -> name resolution on mycingular.net. The names served, such as mobile-033-xxx-yyy-zzz.mycingular.net are not defined and DO NOT RESOLVE. Thus, the iPhone repeatedly attempts to connect, but the connection is rejected due the inability to verify the hostname. I've spent over TWO HOURS on the phone with AT&T, but they simply DON'T GET IT that the problem is due to their violation of internet DNS standard. Perhaps if more people call them and complain about knowing the problem is an AT&T DNS problem and not an iPhone problem, they will figure it out and fix it.
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