Email slow after iOS 26.1 update

Hi LD150,

So you and Jeff are saying that the only way an iPhone 15, running iOS 26.1 or 26.2 can receive email, when the mail setting is on "Automatic" is to be plugged into power and connected to a WiFi system? Maybe I'm too "elderly" but that seems counterintuitive to the entire purpose of buying a $1,000 cellular phone. If I wanted to get voice mail messages in that manner I'd have a land line phone and an answering machine. The whole point of a cellular phone is to be able to communicate with people you need to communicate with while NOT sitting at your desk with a telephone plugged into the wall.

I realize that shutting off the phone will prevent it from functioning in any way, including retrieving emails, or, for that matter, doing anything. But if my phone is turned on why would it have to be plugged into a charger in order to get emails? I know for a fact that this statement is not correct since if I have my phone with me and I open the mail app, and I am NOT plugged into a charger, I can still get mail, all be it extremely slowly.

At the suggestion of other posters I changed the settings on the mail app to NOT fetch mail "Automatically" but "Every 15 Minutes" and it still only retrieves my mail when the app is open and is the active open app on the phone, meaning, if I switch to another app it will not retrieve the emails.

Although I am also an "elderly" guy I've been using computers since the days of Compaq "portable" computers with floppy drives so I'm pretty sure I can tell if something isn't operating properly. If I set the phone to get emails "Every 15 Minutes" and my email app icon on the phone is showing no emails but when I open the app I get a message "Checking for email" and then 20 emails show up, the oldest being 2 hours ago, then there is something wrong with the system.

It would appear that no one on this forum, which, is on the apple.com website so presumably includes people who are supposed to have answers, actually has an answer to this issue.

Thank you for all your input and comments.

SAs I have said, I have not changed anything on my phone. Apple sent the updated IOS to my phone and installed it. I now have a problem with receiving my emails. It literally takes hours to get email, when I do get them, and when I try to read them half the time I only get the heading, the body is still not loaded.

It would be more helpful if you find out why this happened rather that telling me that "change is difficult" or suggesting I'm using some kind of illegal "jailbroken" phone, or "listening to rumors". This isn't a "rumor," it is happening to my phone, which is a legally purchased iPhone. If there is something in Settings that needs to be changed Apple should send out a notification when the send the "update."

[Edited by Moderator]

Maybe that's part of the problem. Maybe customers should be able to "pick and choose" which iOS they want on their phone. Maybe some of us are perfectly happy with the way our phones are working and don't need "transparent icons", maybe we just want to get our mail in a timely manner. How about Apple allow customers who do not like the "updated iOS" to go back to the one that worked perfectly fine.

Well then there does not appear to be a "right answer" since no one has come up with one. I thought this was the place to go to get answers. I guess not because so far no one has been able to tell me why this is happening.

The emails I'm referring to are my primary email account which is an att.net account. I get these emails on my computer almost immediately. On my iPhone 15 with the "old" iOS I got them very quickly. With the "new" iOS, 26.1 and, now, 26.2 I only get them when I open the email account on the phone and then it takes forever for the "checking email" to conclude and then the emails show up but on many of them if I try to open them I get the message that the "content" didn't download.

I'm not sure what my router and model have to do with getting my email on my phone but they were restarted a day or two ago because of another issue.

Hi Mac Jim,

I just rechecked and my accounts are set to "Fetch" and "Automatically". I did notice that under the "Fetch" settings when it is set to "Automatically" it says "Your iPhone will fetch new data in the background only when on power and Wi-Fi. So does this mean that it will only get my email when I am connected to power and when I am connected to a Wi-Fi system? I do not recall this being the case before. I'd get my emails pretty much all day long.

Well, this thing is still not working as it used to. As an example this morning the last email I received before opening the mail app again was at 7:43 a.m. I opened the app a 11:20 a.m. and had 30 emails that came in between the 2 times.

In my "Settings", "Apps", "Mail", "Mail Accounts" the "Fetch New Data" has "Push" turned on. Under that setting my email accounts all indicate "Fetch" in gray. Under that section is a section identified as "Fetch" which states "The schedule below is used when push is off or for applications which do not support push. For better battery life, fetch less-frequently." That is set to "Automatically" rather than any of the specific time schedules listed. Under that it states that "Your iPhone will fetch new data in the background only when on power and Wi-Fi." (emphasis mine).

Are these the correct settings for the new iOS and if so why does my phone still only retrieve mail when I open the Mail app?

As I said, it only helped for a day. Now it's back to not getting email. Apple really needs to fix this.