Rocketship Apple: email

So here’s the follow-up post to explain what went completely pear-shaped with the process of moving to an all-Apple device and network tech deployment at home….

This particular posts refers to one of the services I hold most important – that of email handling, and delivery across multiple devices… so where do I start….?

Well, it’s important to first of all say this is the iPhone 3G, Windows XP, and Outlook 2003 in the mix here. Outlook and the iPhone are acting as pop3 email clients.

I setup my email by using the nifty little feature in iTunes, where you can suck your settings out of Outlook, and convey them to the iPhone, automatically. Nice. I also used email over WiFi the first time I used the client, which was quick and easy. Again, Nice.

After one week, I started to experience multiple email client issues on the iPhone:

1) iPhone would state “connecting” when picking up email, but hang at that point and not collect any mail

2) iPhone could not find incoming (pop) server

3) iPhone could not find outgoing (smtp) server

4) iPhone would not collect mail on schedule (e.g. if hourly collection setup, actual collection is at iPhone’s discretion!)

The short summary here is that the client became completely unreliable, which, when you are sold a promise, is infuriating! In addition, and somewhat ironically, the iPhone has arguably the best mail client on any wireless device (full html email rendering, exactly as per PC), yet can’t get email reliably!

But WHY oh WHY were these things happening – well, there a couple of points to consider:

1) apparently this is a WELL-KNOWN problem with the email client in version 2.1 firmware!!!

2) if you set up your email settings using the ‘auto settings suck’ from Outlook via iTunes feature, your email will stop working properly in under a week (anecdotal, but it seems, true)

3) if you run the email client over WiFi the first time you use it, your email will stop working properly in under a week (anecdotal, but it seems, true)

At any rate, the net result is total frustration – I run a number of business-critical email accounts, and can’t afford for them to be down – at all. To have a situtation where they are working unreliably is actually WORSE than them not working at all – since you are caught in limbo between knowing email has collected/sent, or not – and you’ll never know unless you check via another email client too!

So what was the solution? Is there a solution? More anecdotal evidence I have been given suggests that the email client WAS working in fw v.2.0.x, but then was broken badly by the advent of getting Exchange support working in the newest v2.1 firmware. Quite what happened to the rest of the email client whilst they were shoe-horning in Exchange connectivity is beyond me – but one thing is for sure – POP3 (and IMAP) access via the iPhone client is not currently working properly.

Googling on this issue of email not working there are hundreds of results, which is never a good thing – if you have a widespread problem, the chances are that the combined intelligence of the InterWeb (which is huge) may not have solved it. And that’s the case in this instance.

But am I sore about all this? Well, yes and no. Yes I am sore enough to write a post about it, but that’s more for informational purposes, for those who have a similar setup to me. But no, in the sense, that Microsoft has a part to play in this issue (and an even bigger part to play in the calendar issue – covered in a coming post….)

What are the solutions? Well, alls I can suggest for now is:

1) try and use an exchange account for email, if you are lucky enough to have access to one

2) turn off regular pickup of email, because (a) the schedule won’t be adhered to, and (b) if the iPhone gets stuck in it’s ‘connecting’ loop, you will just thrash your battery life

3) setup manual collection of email from pop accounts – you’ll only have a small delay usually when entering an inbox, to the point where you can see new email

4) do a ‘reset network settings’ from the ‘general > reset’ tab in the settings

5) try using a googlemail account as a proxy in to your pop mail account – apparently googlemail is more reliable

It’s not a pretty sight, having email working unreliably – and it’s been one which has cost me hours and hours of problem-solving, only to still have a half-baked solution. We now await the mighty Apple to fix this issue properly in v2.2 firmware….!

Ben

About The Author

Ben Robinson

Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.

Haonan zhang

I use the iPod touch, but I assume it's the same with and iPhone. Don't even bother with outlook sync via iTunes. Sign up for free exchange account from mail2web.com and forward all your emails to the exchange. That way you get push emails from all your accounts, including hotmail.
JonnyBrha

And that's only the tip of the iceberg. Should you need to do much of anything with attachments, you're pretty much screwed. You can only save pictures sent to you, you can only send pictures (and only one at a time), those pictures are resized to MMS resolution (VGA), and you can only view certain types of other attachments sent to your inbox. All that assuming you can get it to work correctly in the first place, as it seems you weren't able to in its current form. Nice concept and HTML viewer though.
b00st3d

my exchange mail barely works on my iphone…sometimes when a new message comes in and i go to see it, i get an error stating that there is no content in the message. if i manually force the iphone to check for new mail a few times, the message will finally appear. sending mail through exchange works half the time. i never know if it goes through successfully unless i check the sent items folder. I shouldnt have to check the sent items folder each time i send an email to see if it went through. i wish i had confidence that the mail app was actually working. i may have to consider dropping the iphone and switching back to my blackberry.
Ralph

I have an iPhone 3G. I set up my email accounts manually. The email works perfectly and I've never experienced any problems. I use the 3G network, edge network and WiFi at different times. Obviously this problem doesn't affect everyone but hopefully will be addressed in new firmware. Did you email the problem to Apple?
KennMSr

As I said in a previous post about your Rocketship experience you are starting at the wrong end of the list of Equipment buys. It's like planning on buying a new Porsche in the future and first buying those new low profile speed rated tires on Chrome Moly rims then retrofitting them on your Jetta until you purchase your Porsche then you purchase a huge sound system from Porsche and have it retro fitted to the Jetta etc, etc. All that is accomplished is that you gain a lot of experience and eventually you'll have that tricked out new sports roadster. I understand you want to let your fellow Windoz users know what to expect but for the ultimate conversion experience I would have stated with a Apple CPU, the Wireless Network Router then an iPhone.

I think all you problems are with the MS product interfaces I've been using an iPhone since day one with three POP and one iMAP e-mail accounts. Only had minor problems when upgraded to 2.0 FW.

Have enjoyed hearing about your journey and am waiting to hear how the reverse conversion goes once you get your Apple CPU.
club penguin

I assume it’s the same with and iPhone. Don’t even bother with outlook sync via iTunes. Sign up for free exchange account from mail2web.com and forward all your emails to the exchange.
nanovor game

I assume it’s the same with and iPhone. Don’t even bother with outlook sync via iTunes. Sign up for free exchange account from mail2web.com and forward all your emails to the exchange.