How long are IPhone messages stored on Apple Servers?

Visual voicemail messages are stored on AT&T servers, and I'm not sure if messages are automatically deleted after a designated period of time.

You don't play the message from the server anyway.
It is downloaded to your iPhone as a file and you play it directly from the iPhone without accessing the phone network or servers.

What messages are stored on Apple servers?

E-mail?

Visual voicemail messages are stored on AT&T servers and made available on the iPhone via AT&T's data or internet network only.

If you have visual voicemail messages available, turn on Airplane mode and try accessing a message.

You will see an error message that reads - Visual Voicemail is currently unavailable, with a Call Voicemail selection below.

If you don't have cellular reception, you won't have access to visual voicemail messages which are stored on AT&T servers and made available on the iPhone via AT&T servers only. They are not stored locally on the iPhone.

Allan Sampson wrote:
Visual voicemail messages are stored on AT&T servers and made available on the iPhone via AT&T's data or internet network only.

If you have visual voicemail messages available, turn on Airplane mode and try accessing a message.

You will see an error message that reads - Visual Voicemail is currently unavailable, with a Call Voicemail selection below.

If you don't have cellular reception, you won't have access to visual voicemail messages which are stored on AT&T servers and made available on the iPhone via AT&T servers only. They are not stored locally on the iPhone.

You are incorrect.

I have 4 Visual Voicemail messages on my iPhone right now, I can see them in the list when I go to the voice mail area. With the iPhone in Airplane mode, yes the is a button to call voicemail, but the 4 messages that I have on my phone are still listed and can still be played as they are ON MY iPHONE. What you cannot do is get any new messages as clearly there is no network available.

So as I originally stated, once you have received notification that you have a visual voicemail message on your iPhone, that means that the actual message has been downloaded to your iPhone as an audio file, which you can then play regardless of if you have a mobile / data service or not.

This is how visual voicemail operates, it is how you can see who they are from and play them in any order, because they are on the phone and you are NOT contacting the server to listen to them.

It is also why deleted messages can be undeleted, as they are just moved to a 'deleted' area on the phone. Once the network service gets confirmation that the visual voicemail message has been successfully received by the iPhone it is removed from their systems and does not exist anywhere but on the iPhone.

You are correct and my bad.

I had Airplane mode enabled recently and tried accessing a visual voicemail message that was received from a contact in my address book. I must have selected on or near the right facing arrow instead which takes you to the contact's info and indicates which number the voicemail was received from.

This is depends on the email account provider, and I'm not aware of any email account provider that automatically deletes messages from any server stored mailboxes after a designated period of time, with the exception of AOL when accessing an AOL account with an email client other than with the AOL program. Has to do with AOL's old mail/new mail designation with the AOL program, which doesn't apply when accessing the account with an email client.

That being said, if you are referring to a MobileMe account, you can leave messages on the server in server stored mailboxes as long as you like. When you approach the size limit for what you have alloted for email storage with your MM account, you will receive a warning message to remove some messages from the server, and/or you can increase the amount of storage space alloted to email.

With a MM account, you have a total storage limit between iDisk and email, which can be alloted between the two depending on your need and preference. The more you have alloted to email storage, the less you will have available for iDisk storage, and vice versa.

If you use MobileMe your messages are stored on the MobileMe servers as long as they are not deleted from the phone. Once deleted from the phone they are moved to the Deleted folder on the phone and MobileMe. You can set the time to keep them.

If you are not using MobileMe your messages are not stored on any Apple server at all. They may or may not be stored on your email provider's server, depending on whether you use IMAP (they are) or POP (they are not unless you configure the phone to leave them on the server).

A MobileMe account is an IMAP account, so all messages in server stored mailboxes for the account remain on the server and are kept synchronized with the server with the email client used to access the account.

With the Mail.app on a Mac, there is a setting for an IMAP account to keep copies of messages for offline viewing - so the messages are available locally on the hard drive also for viewing when there isn't an internet connection.

There is no such setting for an IMAP account with the iPhone's Mail client. When accessing an IMAP account with the iPhone's mail client, you can choose to store the account's Drafts, Sent, and Trash mailboxes locally on the iPhone instead of on the server, but the same is not possible or available with the account's Inbox mailbox.

Long story short, all received messages remain on the server with an IMAP account until deleted or moved to a locally stored mailbox with the email client used on a computer to access the account. Moving a message from a server stored mailbox to a locally stored mailbox with the email client used on a computer to access the account stores the transferred message locally on the hard drive and removes the message from the server at the same time.

You cannot do the same with the iPhone's mail client. Messages can be deleted from server stored mailboxes with the iPhone's mail client, or transferred from one server stored mailbox to another with an IMAP account only.