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iOS5 Mail crashing

Since installing iOS5 on my first-gen iPad, and also on iOS5 on my newly delivered iPhone 4S, I have had the Mail app crash on a regular basis for me. The first several times it crashed shortly after loading, so no harm was done, but this afternoon I started writing a long email response to someone on the iPhone and it crashed back to the home screen in the middle of that and lost all my edits. So I tried composing the same email espouse on the iPad, and then the same thing happened and I lost all my edits a second time. I now realize that, until a patch for Mail comes out, I can no longer rely upon it for any serious email usage, and that is very disappointing.


Is it just my pair of iOS5 devices that are suffering from this, or are others seeing the same thing?


Thanks,


- David

iPhone 4S-OTHER, iOS 5, 64GB

Posted on Oct 15, 2011 2:21 PM

Reply
222 replies

Oct 28, 2011 5:02 PM in response to Mysticfm

I turned on the automatic diagnostic reports to Apple, so now at least when it crashes (which is still many times a day) I can hope that a report is going somewhere, and maybe somebody will notice and decide to do something. I hope the rest of you will do the same, if you haven't already. I know there are potential privacy concerns, but I'm not too worried.


I have to say, I'm tempted to go back to my iPhone 3G. It wasn't as snappy, but it worked.

Oct 29, 2011 1:49 PM in response to Mysticfm

My mail crashes whenever I save a draft and then reopen it. I can continue to type, but nothing more. Can't save or send at that point. Have to restart the iPad. Always have copied/pasted the "unsaved" email into notepad as a safety measure if it's long, but upon restarting the iPad and then reopening mail, after a few seconds the email I was working on shows up in its entirety and I am able to send it. Hmmmm.

Oct 30, 2011 4:38 PM in response to Mysticfm

Well, I personally am not experiencing this problem with either my iPhone 4S or my iPad 2, Both are running iOS5 and have the same Exchange and iCloud email accounts connected. However, my wife IS having a problem and it goes like this:


She never gets any push email. She'll open the mail app to check it and after about 5 seconds it crashes. After the mail app crashes and she returns to the home screen her new mail notificaiton sound chimes, then her mail app badge icon shows how many emails she has unread. She showed this problem to me today and says it has been going on since we tried to fix her previous email problem. Her previous email problem prevented her from recieving any push email or notifications of pushed email. She would have to manually open the mail app and then wait for it to download mail that was hours old. I deleted both her exchange gmail account and her new icloud account, rebooted the phone, added her two email accounts back.


This is a strange problem and one we can't figure out. In my research for a solution I found this thread and thought I'd chime in here to echo all the other folks who are having email difficulties with iOS5.


Worth noting we've tried not adding iCloud to her phone and at first it seems like all is well, but after a short while emails stop arriving.


😠

Oct 31, 2011 2:57 AM in response to kimfromwoonsocket

Basically that's been my experience too I.e. I'm typing a draft, try to save it, buttons GREYED out, o more cheer until I power off and on. Only occasionally though like maybe one a dy, so only irritating as yet - unlike the hard crashes others in this thread have encountered.


So now if I have a big draft, I do it in iTextpad, then cut paste send.


Mike

Oct 31, 2011 4:24 AM in response to aparmley79

aparmley79, I second your concerns.


I was having the exact same issue as your wife on my iPhone 4 with the update to iOS 5, yet my wife's phone receives push notifications flawlessly. We upgraded to 4S models a few days ago and I am still having Mail crashes and push failures while her's functions correctly.


I've removed all mail accounts then added them back in to no avail. My main mail account is set up as an Exchange account, as my mail is essentially a paid Gmail account (Google Apps for Business). This setup worked without a hitch for years until the iOS 5 update.


Hopefully these mail concerns get addressed quickly.

Oct 31, 2011 7:14 AM in response to Mysticfm

My iOS5 mail crash issue is this: When I reply (using Mail app connected to GMail through Exchange on iPhone) to an email sent by a specific GMail user, it will simply crash the Mail app and return to the Home screen. I can reply to all other recipients just fine, and I can send a new email to everybody just fine. It seems to only crash for me when replying to one specific GMail recipient. Not sure if this matters, but that one recipient sent me emails on her Galaxy S II on AT&T.

Oct 31, 2011 8:34 PM in response to Mysticfm

I just wanted to add a "me too".


I have a new iPhone 4 S, and mail keeps crashing left and right, when coming in from the lock screen, when switching into it, when replying, when checking mail...


I have 2 accounts, a work account and a gmail account, mail app crashes for both, even in the middle of replying, in which case the draft is not saved, which is specially annoying when typing a long reply.


As far as i know i have the crash log sending enabled, so i hope Apple can fix this issue soon, just on my phone there are close to 500 crash logs so it's not like they don't have information.

Nov 1, 2011 9:02 AM in response to Mysticfm

I'm having mail problems too on my iphone 4 running iOS 5. When I open the app it freezes. I have to close it down, double click the home button to open the 'multitask'/current running apps and close the mail one down. I then have to wait 10-20s, re-open the mail and then all works fine. I can't recall the app crashing mid email, although I do not write lengthy emails on my phone.

Out of interest does it only crash/freeze with certain email providers, or is it an app bug? I currently have hotmail and gmail synced with my iphone 4.

Nov 2, 2011 5:12 AM in response to Mysticfm

I had the time to restore my 4S again yesterday. They key was to set it up as a new phone after restoring, rather than restoring from a backup. I wanted to try this as the problem carried over from my iPhone 4 to the new 4S (It began with the update to iOS 5).


Although rather time-consuming with rearranging apps and reentering settings, the restoration to a new phone appears to have solved the Mail crash. The crash must have been caused by corruption in my original iOS 5 update that carried over to the new phone by restoring from a backup.


My wife's 4S which was set up with a backup of her iPhone 4 has always worked flawlessly since the iOS 5 update and continues to do so. This seems to confirm the continual crashing on mine was caused by a corrupt update.


If you are desparate enough to spend the time, restore your phone and set it up as new.

Nov 2, 2011 1:52 PM in response to krbywg

Yes, I did this too, last night, after a third trip to the Genius Bar. It didn't solve the probem for me either, unfortunately. Since I've already swapped phones, re-entered the settings, etc. the only thing left that I can think of is to go to AT&T and get them to give me a new SIM card, in case it's a defect in the SIM card that is causing the problems. It's the only thing that was constant across the two phones that were giving me trouble. Has anybody else tried that?

Nov 2, 2011 2:41 PM in response to retrogusto

I'm uncertain that a new SIM would help.


My SIM is less than a year old (new with my iPhone4), but the mail issue has only started happening since I upgraded to iOS5. The fact that others are seeing the exact same problem is indicative that it is a wider issue and probably something to do with the software rather than everyone having a faulty SIM - that would be a little too coincidental.


The fact that doing a restore/deleting and re-adding accounts/removing unused SMTP servers etc seems to temprorarily provide a fix makes it sound even more like there is a bug in the new version of the mail app.

iOS5 Mail crashing

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