Now I’m curious here - according to this article it seems that there are a number of people having email issues on their iPhones, but I have yet to run across any in my immediate entourage of iPhone using colleagues and friends. Here’s the summary of the problems:
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.
Some of the issues noted are:
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!)
A couple of important points:
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Do not, repeat, do not use POP3 on a mail account accessed by multiple devices. This is 2008 going on 2009 and there’s absolutely no reason to be using POP3 any more. This is what IMAP was designed for (among other things).
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POP3 doesn’t allow multiple concurrent accesses to a mailbox. If your Outlook client has opened a connection, the iPhone is going to block trying to access the mailbox. Use IMAP.
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You talk a lot about the mail clients involved here, but nothing about the mail server or network configuration. It’s kind of important to include these details when trying to figure out why things aren’t working the way they ought to.
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The mail collection schedule is overridden when you open the Mail application on the iPhone.
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In most cases, the issue of not being able to find a server is almost always a DNS or network issue and nothing to do with the mail client in question. You have to remember that the iPhone is happily changing network environments every time that you switch between Edge, 3G and Wifi and you need to be aware of the context. If your mail server is located on your home or office network, but is available over the internet, it’s a given that you have two different IP addresses for the server - one for when you’re on the local network via Wifi, and another while you’re coming in over the internet. In that case, you have to look out for caching issues. If you established a connection from your Wifi network and then tried to connect from a 3G connection, you may be looking for the cached address that you can’t access from the internet.
The brute force fix for this kind of connectivity problem is simple: Active Airplane mode, wait for the operator name to go away, and then disable Airplane mode and you have a fresh network connection with caches cleared and ready to go in the appropriate context.