E-Mail showing up as Black Screen

First, try an iPhone reset, which is done by pressing and holding the home button and the sleep/wake or on/off button simultaneously until you see the Apple logo and then release - ignoring the slide to turn off prompt when doing so. A reset does not affect and data or settings.

Hi,

You can try forcing the application to quit as described here:

+To force an application to close, follow these steps:+
+iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0 or later+
+Press and hold the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears. When the red slider appears, release the Sleep/Wake button.+
+Instead of dragging the red slider, press and hold the Home button for six seconds.+
+If the device does not return to the Home screen, see the steps below to restart.+
from: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1445

If the issue persists, you should try restarting before trying to reset.
You can restart the iPhone by holding the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears> then slide to turn off> and turn the iPhone back on by pressing the Sleep/Wake again, as described on page 46 of the iPhone User Guide.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/iPhoneUserGuide.pdf

-Jason

I've had the same black screen issue happen with mail on a iPhone 3GS during the past couple of days. Has anybody been able to figure out the cause or a more permanent solution? Thanks!

I had this happen to me today for the first time. I had to restart the iPhone and it has been working fine since then.

What grabbed my attention was that the iPhone was starting to slow down and wasn't as responsive as it had been in the past. I didn't restart the iPhone until the Mail app went to the black screen. It is now back to "normal" conditions after restart.

If this continues, you may want to do a restore on your phone.

The first option worked for me. One catch needed to be in mail before I could force quit it.

Same issue here.
A hard reset will correct the problem for a while, but it keeps coming back after inconsistent amounts of time.

This is the first app malfunction I've had since getting the 3GS, I'm surprised it's an Apple app and not a 3rd party that's the issue.

Had this happen on my Wife's Iphone 3Gs today. The force application procedure mentioned above fixed it.

Not sure if it's relevant but just prior to this event she had received a text/photo message that the Iphone could not display.

Same thing happened to my iPhone 3G two days ago. Reset worked.

I too had this issue today. I found this forum and I solved my problem with restarting my iPhone 3GS. This issue (black screen) happened to me when I recieved new mail. I tapped Mail icon and got black screen. I could navigate back to Home screen, but again when I started Mail program, black screen was there. Thank you all for this tips!

thanks for that its working fine now on my ipod touch but why does it only do it on the email app.

Reset fixed it, hold sleep and home buttons past the red slider and wait for the apple. Phone reset and mail's black screen was back to normal.

The email screen goes black when the screen (unintentionally) rotates during the initial message download. Happens to me consistently when checking email while lying down. Another reason to be able to toggle rotation on & off on this dang phone (see Kindle app)...please!

Same problem, and IPhone reset fixed it just fine. Thanks!