Mail not working on iPhone 4s
I've been having an intermittent problem accessing my email for several months now. The problem comes and goes. I'm set up not to receive push mail, so to see my new mail messages I need to click on the Mail app. When things are working properly, this is just fine, and what I want. But sometimes, and perhaps increasingly often, when I click the Mail app, instead of a quick (couple/few seconds) interval for it to download new messages, there is just a message on the bottom of the screen: "Connecting..." This may go on for a while and then there may be a further slow "Checking for messages," or it may just sit there "Connecting." It may or may not succeed in finally downloading the new messages. A short while later it may work fine again. It's unpredictable, but sometimes now I can't connect to get messages at all, e.g. today. More details:
- This is not a function of strength of my cell signal.
- Closing the Mail app and rebooting does not help; neither does rebooting the phone.
- This is happening with a Yahoo Mail account. I've seen at least one other thread here about problems with Yahoo Mail. I don't have any other non-Yahoo accounts to try.
- Phone is iPhone 4s, iOS 5.1.1 (no, I don't want to update to iOS6).
- Carrier: Verizon. This problem happens in at least two major cities in the northeast U.S.
The intermittent nature of the problem suggests some sort of network issue, since none of my phone settings are changing, but here is what I don't understand: I don't know where in the chain the problem might lie: Verizon, Apple, or Yahoo? For instance, does the Mail app access an Apple server which then connects to Yahoo? Where might this connection be failing? In Yahoo's servers, Apple's, or what? Anybody else having this problem? What to do?
