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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

Nov 7, 2011 8:44 AM in response to Mysticfm

I think I managed to replicate this: Everytime I have Find My Friends app installed, the mail crashes and hangs very often (as in once a day at least). As soon as I uninstall Find My Friends app AND restart the phone. It never happens again. Once think I haven't been able to confirm is if it happens when my friends look me up on their Find My Friends that wakes it up and screws with other apps.

Nov 7, 2011 5:08 PM in response to ksajadi

I'm about to throw the iphone 4 in the trash. Email has crashed so many times in the middle of writing/responding to messages that I have lost all confidence in the device....hey, isnt' this why I bought Apple in the first place?


I'm wondering if any Apple support folk read/resond to these posts, since it seems there's only those of us who are having problems comiserating.....


Has anyone seen any statement from Apple?...like...."holy crud, we really messed this up and we're working on a fix".

Nov 7, 2011 9:14 PM in response to imnimer

I keep pushing Apple to make a statement and get them to admit it, but not yet.....My senior level guy is writing letters back and forth with engineering. I had downloaded the iPhone Configuration Utility they had me put on my Mac and have been trying to replicate the problem while the iPhone is connected. My iPhone 4S AND my iPad 2 are consistently crashing several times a day, but, after several days of trying I finally got it to crash while having the utility running while the phone is connected to the computer......So I sent them the report to analyze........but the crashing is continuous on both of my devices when out in the field or away from my desktop.


I'm also in the habit now of saving and saving and saving as I write any email so I could at least pick up where I left off when it crashes, before I hit send.


Message was edited by: Applebonkers

Nov 8, 2011 10:11 AM in response to Applebonkers

Happening on my brand new 3GS from Apple Store upgraded to IOS5. Fortunately I still have my old 3G


Called Apple and reported it if only to add to the pressure to get this fixed.


Was advised to either delete and re add my email accounts or reinstall the phone, though from what others have said I'm not sure its worth the effort as it sounds like its a bug in IOS5 which just needs fixing.

Nov 9, 2011 4:42 PM in response to Mysticfm

Hopefully with more user complaints here Apple will address this...

I have 2 iphone 4 phones, original iPad, and an iPad 2. All have this issue and it is getting really old. My wife is ready to kill me. Nothingnhas worked so far and yes I can see lots of errors in the log files. This is such a huge issue since this is a highly used native app. Fix This!!!!

Nov 12, 2011 4:02 AM in response to CKOle

Upgraded to IOS 5.0.1. Still the same crashes of Mail.app and in the same time battery can drain from 100% to 20% in 5 hours.


After opening Mail Inbox I can see that it again and again reloads e-mails that are newer than few days. For me this problem is only with my work (Lotus Notes) account. Gmail inbox seems ok.

Nov 12, 2011 6:18 AM in response to Mysticfm

An update on my current situation and information discovered.


I have installed 5.01 as an OTA update. No issues. Crashes with mail persisted.


I went into mail on the phone and deleted all the accounts after performing a sync with iTunes. I unchecked Sync Mail Accounts in iTunes and synced again. All mail essentially gone from the phone.


I added back in my MobileMe account (figured it was as good as anyplace to start). Synced. MobileMe was again on the phone. Tested briefly, experienced no crashes. When I added it back, it only syncs mail settings, so I flicked all the other settings in iOS for MobileMe back to on as well and did a resync.


Continued to add other accounts back to the phone one at a time (add the account in iTunes to sync then sync). All accounts restored (except one that I had marked inactive in Mail, which I deleted from mail during this process).


Now, I noticed that one of my accounts was set to use SSL for an account that supported SSL but didn't have a dedicated certificate (was a self-signed used for testing). Changed settings in mail to only use non-ssl for that account and cleaned up some other settings on my outgoing mail servers (not all were named, etc). Re-synced with iTunes.


It's been a full 24 hours since I performed those steps and I have yet to have a single crash. While this may only be a temporary solution based on others that have posted here, it is the first thing I've done that has improved things at all so I wanted to share with the community my findings. Will post again if I have another crash, otherwise should assume it did work.

Nov 12, 2011 7:29 AM in response to Mysticfm

Last week I changed webhost providers and in the process changed my POP3 email accounts over to IMAP. No mail crashes since Tuesday. Not sure if the host or POP3 was the issue but either way all 4 iOS devices are working properly. Even better, the Partner Acceptence Rating for iOS 5 is up to 'acceptable'. So for me, I am leaving this issue behind. :-)

Nov 12, 2011 8:49 AM in response to CKOle

Just to add a "Me Too!" to the forum: iOS5 has turned both my iPhone 4 and iPad 1 Mail apps into crashy exercises in frustration. Additionally, my previously rock-solid iPad is now so laggy when I type that I can't really use it. And since apps crash so often with iOS5, I can no longer play games on it either.


There's a one finger gesture I'm using a lot with my iPad these days... 😉


Oh Apple, please fix!

Nov 12, 2011 9:03 AM in response to Mysticfm

Installing 5.0.1 has not improved email crashing on my iPad 1.


An earlier poster deleted all mail accounts and started over with some success. Time consuming as that may be, I might have to try it as well because this issue does not appear to be of great concern to Apple.


Meanwhile I can't reliably use the device for the purpose that I purchased it for.

Nov 12, 2011 9:10 AM in response to pjackman

I've read elsewhere that deleting and resetting all mail accounts didn't help in the end (might be some flavour of POP account making Mail unstable). There are so many other issues I'm experiencing (mostly with iPad 1) that I'm hoping Apple will fix a bunch with the next update.


Last time this kind of thing happened was when iOS4 borked my iPhone 3G and after months of frustration, I sold it to a jailbreaker and bought the iPhone 4.


Sigh.

Nov 13, 2011 11:19 PM in response to Mysticfm

I fixed mine 🙂.


Please note that along with mail app problems i also had battery problems and massive data usage. Now everything is fine (this fix was done prior to the 5.0.1 update) From what i can understand the problem was corrupt data that was causing communication problems between my phone and my mail server. So the first thing i did was empty the deleted items folder on my server because usually the problem is in there....and....that was it!! Everything is working fine now! No more mail app crashes, the battery is back to normal, and also no more massive data usage. I dont know if this fix applies to everyone but i would give it a try....

iOS5 Mail crashing

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