IMAP inbox problem - I'm getting very fru…

IMAP inbox problem - I'm getting very frustrated

I am getting really fed up with iOS4 mail.
I've got a standard Linux IMAP server for my work. Everything was working fine on iPhone version 3.1.3. After upgrading to iOS4:

- I only see 12 or so emails for the past 2 days, even though there are several more (6 or so) in my inbox. It's almost as if there is a moving "window", even though there is no setting for that for a generic IMAP account.

- In the "Load more messages" entry, it says I have 1801 messages in my Inbox. I only have about 20 messages in my inbox. When I choose "Load more messages", it loads only one more message at a time, and those messages disappear if I leave the inbox and return.

- Emails that I have deleted on my desktop are not reliably being updated on my phone. I then deleted them on my phone, but they showed up again when I left and reentered the inbox. (These were flagged as unread when I deleted them). I got them to really go away by opening them up and then deleting them again.

Posted on Jun 23, 2010 10:44 AM

Sep 13, 2010 6:54 PM in response to gvde

I believe it is clearly an issue with the iOS 4.x software not being compatible with UW IMAP server. I was using UW IMAP-2007e with the same issue. Likely an Apple engineer changed an IMAP client setting for better functionality with MS Exchange which broke compatibility with UW IMAP. There were no issues with the older iOS 3.1.x software or other IMAP clients working with UW IMAP server. Every bug I have ever tried to submit to Apple they just ignore, so I highly doubt Apple will ever resolve the issue; and Steve wants end users happy... He just wants more customers $.
I would recommend switching to another IMAP server if you want a “work around”. UW laid off the software engineers who worked on UW IMAP, so it is not being developed anymore; it may be wise in the long run anyway to switch IMAP servers because of this. One of the old developers created panda IMAP which is a version derived from the UW IMAP code tree. Note: you have to "donate" in order to download the source code. I don’t know if panda has the same issue with iOS4 though. Another alternative which was already mentioned in this thread is Dovecot IMAP server. Dovecot is one of the few IMAP servers that like UW IMAP, can use standard UNIX mbox mailboxes and is also free.
I switched from UW IMAP to dovecot IMAP without any major issues and I once again now have 200 messages properly being displayed on my iPhone instead of a rolling ~12-15. A couple of notes if you do make the switch to Dovecot IMAP server. Make sure to read the docs for migrating from UW IMAP to dovecot, there are a couple of config options you will want to set. Also to note, a lot of the documentation is for the older 1.x version, the docs are not fully updated for the 2.x version so just check your config for errors on startup or execute with the -a flag; it will tell you the replacement settings. 3rd if you compile and install from source (version 2.x)- when you copy over the example config, make sure to also create the conf.d directory and copy those example files as well. They are pulled in with an include statement in the main dovecot.conf file