2.1 - ActiveSync Cannot Get Mail still broken

John, I am in the same boat with you. We are running Exchange 2007 and have continuously had push stop syncing after a change in network, wifi/3G/Edge, or so it seems.

Additional points:
-EAS is (had for me too) working perfectly with a handful of TREOs
-We have 4 iPhone users reporting the same problem of push stopping.
-Exchange initially syncs (after accepting the certificate) and populates email, calendar, and contacts.
-I also have a POP account & Gmail account configured
-A reset of the mail app does not restart push, nor does a hard reset of the phone.
-IT adjusted the heartbeats on the server and reported that the server was not logging any errors from our devices.
-I am running 2.1 and I have had this problem since 2.0.
-When push stops, my battery life drops dramatically.

Any ideas?

Mike

My flavor of this problem, if it is the same issue, is that I am able to get mail from ActiveSync okay, but not without what seems to be a spurious error dialogue, saying: Cannot get Mail - The connection to the server failed. Comparing what is on my iPhone versus my desktop clients, I see that things are sync'ed up fine. It's just incredibly annoying, if not non-functional.

Having the same problem with EXCH 2003 as well. We had very few problems with 2.0.2, but this 2.1 is a major hassle.

I've posted this is a couple of other threads.

I have been unable to get the iPhone 3G to sync with our exchange server (2003 SP2). When I first setup the account on the iPhone, enter the user credentials and server address etc, it verifies the account ok. Now I assumed from this that all would be ok, but when I try and sync mail account, I get the "Cannot Get Mail" "The connection to the server failed", which makes no sense to me at all as it has already connected and confirmed the account when I set the mail account up.

Its been over a month now and despite trying everything suggested to me, it still will not work.

We have blackberry users at the company as well, and their devices sync mail, calendar and contacts using ActiveSync without any problems at all.

Something isn't quite right.

I had a similar issue. My phone would sync up fine initially, but then I would not receive any push email. I would only get email when manually fetching. It turned out to be an issue with a Microsoft Security update. I fixed it by following this article:

http://blogs.technet.com/sbs/archive/2008/07/17/some-services-may-fail-to-start- or-may-not-work-properly-after-installing-ms08-037-951746-and-951748.aspx

I have the same problem:
- Account is verified instantly and seems to work
- Calendar works great, push works, new events appear, etc.
- EMail never, ever syncs. I know it can connect because the list of sub-folders I have under "Inbox" appears, but I can never download any mail messages.
- It just spins for a while and says "Connection to server failed."

I have iPhone 2.1 -- this stopped working in the last week, after I upgraded.

I have all sorts of problem on my iphone too and the 2.1 update seems to have made its worse. We are running Exchange 2003 and I have been using Windows Mobile Activesync flawlessly for about 2 years. I dont want to Push email because I understand its guzzles battery life, so I am setting my phone to Manual collection. The iPhone only seems to download e-mail once I its been read using Outlook, (either OWA or Outlook client) I have tried just about everthing on the iphone to get it to work, so far all to no avail. Bottom line, at the moment it aint working reliably which is terribly disappointing because e-mail is the most important thing for me. The only saving grace is that OWA works pretty well in Safari, however with the flaky connection with 3G or GPRS, unfortunately this isnt robust enough to depend on! I think I may see if I can switch to IMAP as I understand others are doing!

Well I can confirm that IMAP works absolutely fine, but this is no good to me because we use Exchange Server and my boss needs his contacts and calendar to sync as well.

Got "cannot get mail etc" message too. Tried everything and nothing happens.
Any other ideas.
(Having iPhone 1st gen, with 2.1 and a company exchange 2003 svr. When I set up the company mail as an IMAP it works perfect but when I'm trying as an "Exchange" it verifies the set up and after that I'm always having the msg. maybe I'll through my phone).

It would seem to me this has to a problem on the iPhone side, and not on the server. Especially seeing that we are able to initially sync everything (mail, contacts, calendar) perfectly. When the push (or even manual retrieval for that matter) drops, and you get the dreaded "Cannot Get Mail/The Connection to the Server Failed" Message, you have to go back into settings, change one number on the port number, back out, go back and in replace the number, and voila...you sync and connect again. I would try a reset of the phone, but even on a new install, the drop occurs.

I sincerely hope Apple addresses this issue. It is beginning to look like a deal breaker for us if they do not. Especially seeing my TREO, under the same Exchange Server, never, ever, had a problem with EAS.

In case you weren't aware, BlackBerry devices are unable to use ActiveSync. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server uses MAPI directly to Exchange to retrieve email for the BlackBerry device.

I mention this only because I keep reading posts saying that the BlackBerry devices work just fine, but that's because they use a completely different access method -- the two really shouldn't be compared for this purpose.

I hope this is useful.

Usually, there is a firewall and/or an ISA server between the Exchange server and the iPhone. So a few things to check:
1) Is the firewall connection time-out set correctly per Apple's specs?
+For all firewalls and network appliances, set the idle session timeout to 30 minutes.+
2) Is the ISA server up-to-date and fully patched?
3) Is the coverage adequate. I have seen this error message when the iPhone is switching between 3G and EDGE networks, however, I haven't ever experienced the push stall.

Hi LenH.

My company doesn't operate a hardware ISA firewall. We use the inbuilt firewall with our Netgear DG834G router. Therefore, I don't believe there are any settings I can change on that.

3G coverage is fine as internet operates fine, as does an IMAP email account I've setup on there.

Unlike others who have posted here, I have NEVER managed to sync this iPhone with the users Exchange mail account for email, contacts or calendar. I've only got as far as verifying the account when I set it up.

Is there anything I can try? ActiveSync is enabled under "Mobile Services" in Exchange System Manager.

Our server is running Exchange 2003 SP2. iPhone is running 2.1 software

I've had this problem and had originally opened a case with Apple early August. The support reps were completely clueless and said they had never seen this before... to the point of just blaming our Exchange install.

However, evidence was that my Winmobile device worked flawlessly, but the iphone would not push email once the device was in deep sleep. The phone apparently has 3 modes... on, sleep, and deep sleep. Push would work when it was plugged in without issues. When unplugged, push would work while on, or in sleep... after about 15 minutes in sleep, it would just stop pushing.

I have all the errors in the AS logs, and it shows that AS tries to connect to the network, but cannot because I think part of the radio is turned off.

So, on a whim, I set up a dummy yahoo account, set to fetch mail every 15 min. This keeps the radio alive and prevents it from going into deep sleep... or if it does, then the fetch just wakes it up, and then my EAS mail starts to flow.

I gave the above solution to Apple, but my case was just closed because they did not hear back from development.

The problem with my experience was that Apple Support made me doubt myself and think that maybe, just maybe it was Exchange. However, with hearing other people having the same issue... now I know it is the phone.