Help Email problem Sumsung Captivate

[JBH]

Hello all.

Had my Captivate for a 8 days now. Just noticed that after some time, the email client fails to retrieve new mail from my att yahoo account. A reboot corrects the issue.

No doubt the email client is sub-par.

I have and use multiple phones so I know what to expect from Android on Verizon for example (moto Droid & htc Incredible).

Otherwise I LOVE this phone. Hardware is high quality. Screen fantastic. Speedy user experience.

Might return it to the at&t store just for this email client problem alone. I might do it for spite. How can a Co. with Samsung's resources and abilities release a phone with a broken email client?

Ok, I don't think I can return Captivate unless I give up my att #. Since the only other phone at&t has that I would want is an iPhone and I've been down that road before. Admittedly I suspect the iPhone 4 is better than the 3G model that I had before. Gonna think about it today. Have until 6 p.m. to make a decision.

 

[arieldg]

I've been using the Captivate for 2 weeks now and I came from the 3G iphone, and I've had to switch my important email accounts (car, mortgage, and other bills) to my gmail account because my yahoo mail takes FOREVER to load.
Anyone having yahoo email issues???

Thanks

Jopet216- yeah I am having yahoo email getting that same stinking error that everyone is getting, been on the phone with tech support from at&t no help. but did been reading other forum regard to the (processcom.android.email) one article i read is to load the K-9 free app , and once i did that and configured the setting my yahoo email seem to be working fine. received and send, but who knows i maybe talking to soon. will advice it appeas. PS I only have this captivate for 1 week. and what a headache so far.

 

[bmoliver]

Jopet216- yeah I am having yahoo email getting that same stinking error that everyone is getting, been on the phone with tech support from at&t no help. but did been reading other forum regard to the (processcom.android.email) one article i read is to load the K-9 free app , and once i did that and configured the setting my yahoo email seem to be working fine. received and send, but who knows i maybe talking to soon. will advice it appeas. PS I only have this captivate for 1 week. and what a headache so far.

I was/am also having issues with the stock email program. It would get into a mode where it would not automatically or manually send or receive emails from my POP account. I installed K-9 and this seemed to help, however, this morning, both failed and I had to reboot the phone to get them to work. When working, K-9 is much faster than the stock program.

 

[arieldg]

I was/am also having issues with the stock email program. It would get into a mode where it would not automatically or manually send or receive emails from my POP account. I installed K-9 and this seemed to help, however, this morning, both failed and I had to reboot the phone to get them to work. When working, K-9 is much faster than the stock program.

bmoliver- ok this morning i had the the same issue again by pop account is missing and k-9 didn't do a thing, going through countless hours with a at&t figuring out they don't know how to solved the issue or what cause the issue. so figuring how the phone os.
figuring this phone which we all have is just amazing but does have little flaws. Sitting with the phone in my hand asking myself what is causing this error and what cuase it. My thought is since this captivate has a google base software, how about putting my google acct email (gmail) on the main email and have my secondary (yahoo) on the droid email, well i did just that, and so far it email is working beautifully. i got notified on both email and that all that matters at this point.

note: the error that everyone is getting (process.com.android.email) since all off us got that error we all had to delete our email acct setting and some most of the data including contact. that same type of error appeared in my contact list menu. "it blowed me away" email was working now same on the contact menu?????
luckily i was at the at&t store because i had to have them copy and past all my contact from another phone to my Captivate because I had to delete all my data from the captivatge due to the error on email as i mentioned.
ok so here we go again. phone is clear to the factory setting. at&t copy and paste all contact to the captivate. I enter in my gmail acct to my main email and went to the market site to pull up (Yahoo email) droid.
Set both emails, cross all fingers, tested both by sending stupid text to each acct. both email works and getting notifiy pings just how i wanted to do..
also this issue is a software issue not a hardware. so replacing the dealer by replace the phone may not fix the problem you may have the same issue on another droid phone.

I hope this help. and i hope that my issue is gone perminently

 

[bmoliver]

arieldg - My problems seem to occur when I leave the phone charging on the USB cable overnight (the most practical way for me). When I unplugged the phone this morning, that is when I had to reboot to get either email program (stock and K-9) to start working again, and both have been working so far all day today.

 

[joseverdin10]

My captivate fails to retrieve new emails even when using the browser based gmail site. I don't know what the problem seems to be. And I also leave my phone charging overnight. I've tried various email apps from market to no avail.this is very disappointing. Hope it isn't a hardware issue.

 

[Sig32]

I have had my phone for a week now and I can't get passed how bad the email is on it. I came from a BB and I expected it not to be as good and I was ok with it, but it is hit or miss as to whether the phone retrieves my email. There has been times when I would have to manually download the emails that were waiting for more than 2 hours even though I have the account set to retrieve every 5 minutes. Hopefully this will be addressed soon as I really like everything else.

 

[sremick]

I have had my phone for a week now and I can't get passed how bad the email is on it. I came from a BB and I expected it not to be as good and I was ok with it, but it is hit or miss as to whether the phone retrieves my email. There has been times when I would have to manually download the emails that were waiting for more than 2 hours even though I have the account set to retrieve every 5 minutes. Hopefully this will be addressed soon as I really like everything else.

Some email providers are better than others. You've not told us which you use, and how you connect to it.

And some mail apps are better than others. K-9 Mail is an enhanced and improved version of the basic stock mail client that comes with Android. You might look into that.

 

[Powerbug]

Yep, all of the above. I finally gave up on the Samsung email and started using Gmail. I went to my ISP's site and had my email forwarded to my Gmail account. Works great. I still have my email set up in the Samsung app (2 accounts- my usual email and my Gmail. Both as pop3) This way when I want to reply to an email, I can do so from either one. It's a good temp fix until Samsung addresses this issue.
BTW, leave the Samsung app closed and kill it everytime with Task killer. Just open it when you want to reply with your standard email.

 

[baddress]

I think I can help you guys out. I went through this same issue. I went through the debug logs from the email client crashes and found the answer to my issue and perhaps it will solve your issue as well.

My issue was caused by an IT Security Policy that was trying to be applied by the Exchange Activesync. The IT security policy does things like make sure you can't access Activesync unless you have a lock code on your lock screen, or sets how the sync works etc. Well in my case it was Android 2.1 Samsung doesn't properly report the lock code is present back to Activesync, so when it tries to apply the policy it page faults (regardless to whether you actually have a lock code in place or not!). You can see in the logs the policy checking for a lock code, phone says it has a lock code, policy says no you don't have it, phone says yes I do, policy says I can't process that variable and then <barf>.

So the solution is, ask your IT department to remove the all the security policies from your activesync profile. Then wait however long to make sure the no-policy configuration is active on the exchange end. Then factory reset your phone and set your exchange up again and it will probably be OK.

 

[bmoliver]

Some email providers are better than others. You've not told us which you use, and how you connect to it.

And some mail apps are better than others. K-9 Mail is an enhanced and improved version of the basic stock mail client that comes with Android. You might look into that.

The stock email client on my phone has not picked up my email from my POP account for the past two days (it is set to check every 30 minutes), and this is not the first time this has happened. However, K-9 has worked fine over the same period for the same POP account! Something is clearly broken with the stock email app.

 

[modelerr]

I seem to have a different set of issues using POP3 accounts. The initial issue is that it is hit or miss as to automatic notification of emails that have arrived. The second issue is that I am not receiving every email on the phone. When I check my inbox at my computer, invariably there are additional email messages that were never pushed to the Captivate.

Is there anyone else out there experiencing this?

I am experiencing your 2nd problem. Just bought the captivate and am sharing email address with my desktop computer. Found that many (though not all) e-mails coming into computer's inbox are not being picked up by the phone. This is very troubling and I have not found an answer.

 

[sremick]

I am experiencing your 2nd problem. Just bought the captivate and am sharing email address with my desktop computer. Found that many (though not all) e-mails coming into computer's inbox are not being picked up by the phone. This is very troubling and I have not found an answer.

If you're using POP, that's why. POP is not meant to be shared by more than 1 device.

When a POP client fetches mail, it traditionally removes it from the server. Therefore there'd be nothing for your Captivate to fetch. While you can configure a POP client to leave mail on server, this can turn into its own headache as there's no clean mechanism to then manage what has been left on the server.

The proper solution for a multi-client mailbox is to use IMAP and not POP. If your email provider doesn't offer IMAP, you'll be looking at changing to a better email service. IMAP leaves all mail on the server, and organizes it into folders and so on, allows for shared access, "push" notification, etc. Basically, it's the proper tool to accomplish what you're trying to do. Anything else (such as POP) will have less-than-satisfactory results.

 

[aweitzman]

If you're using POP, that's why. POP is not meant to be shared by more than 1 device.


The proper solution for a multi-client mailbox is to use IMAP and not POP. If your email provider doesn't offer IMAP, you'll be looking at changing to a better email service. IMAP leaves all mail on the server, and organizes it into folders and so on, allows for shared access, "push" notification, etc. Basically, it's the proper tool to accomplish what you're trying to do. Anything else (such as POP) will have less-than-satisfactory results.

Then why does my wife's HTC phone work fine and my samsung Captivate doesn't. We both have comcast email accounts set up on our computers and the same accounts on our phones.
Her phones email app works great. Mine fails most of the time. I actually just use the browser to go to check my email.

 

[sremick]

Then why does my wife's HTC phone work fine and my samsung Captivate doesn't. We both have comcast email accounts set up on our computers and the same accounts on our phones.
Her phones email app works great. Mine fails most of the time. I actually just use the browser to go to check my email.

She's doing something different, using it different, or has it configured different so she's avoiding the issue or not noticing it as much as you are. For example, maybe she uses it in a way to ensure that whatever client is set to leave emails on the server always checks the emails first before the other client (which is set to remove them) checks. This is hard to ensure though. I don't know all the details about how your wife uses her email. I do know intrinsically how POP and IMAP work, however.

POP is not meant for shared access by multiple clients. Unwanted behavior can and usually does result. There's no pretty way to set it up to guarantee it'll always work nicely.

IMAP is meant for shared access. It's specifically designed to allow this. IMAP is the proper solution when you've got more than one client checking a single mailbox.

You're having problems because you're trying to use something in a way it was never designed to be used. There's a different tool for the job... you need to use the right solution for your purposes.

 

[aweitzman]

So does comcast allow IMAP account set up?. I have recently downloaded K-9 mail and it seems to be working quite well - much better than the stock email on the phone. I delete from either phone or home computer (on the same email account) and no problems so far. ONe of the settings option on K-9 was "delete from server".
why does K-9 work if I haven't set up anything different (in terms of IMAP etc..)

 

[Captain19]

I was having email issues too. Very frustrating. I installed K9 free from the market and problems solved. I don't use exchange so I don't know how K9 would handle that but for pop email it's been working great.

 

[sremick]

So does comcast allow IMAP account set up?

Not sure, but it's always advised to use email through a company independent of your ISP. That way if you move or otherwise change ISPs, your email address needn't change.

Personally, I also have my own domain, so I am free to change email providers anytime and keep my same email address.

why does K-9 work if I haven't set up anything different (in terms of IMAP etc..)

Because it's updated and maintained (bugfixed) actively, while the email app that comes with the Captivate is the basic stock app and won't see an update until a full Android update comes along.

Using the stock apps on Android is akin to using Wordpad for your word-processing and IE6 for your web browsing simply because that's what came with XP. It's not a phone: it's a handheld computer. Go download some quality apps and move forward in your life.

 

[bolts2]

I think I can help you guys out. I went through this same issue. I went through the debug logs from the email client crashes and found the answer to my issue and perhaps it will solve your issue as well.

My issue was caused by an IT Security Policy that was trying to be applied by the Exchange Activesync. The IT security policy does things like make sure you can't access Activesync unless you have a lock code on your lock screen, or sets how the sync works etc. Well in my case it was Android 2.1 Samsung doesn't properly report the lock code is present back to Activesync, so when it tries to apply the policy it page faults (regardless to whether you actually have a lock code in place or not!). You can see in the logs the policy checking for a lock code, phone says it has a lock code, policy says no you don't have it, phone says yes I do, policy says I can't process that variable and then <barf>.

So the solution is, ask your IT department to remove the all the security policies from your activesync profile. Then wait however long to make sure the no-policy configuration is active on the exchange end. Then factory reset your phone and set your exchange up again and it will probably be OK.

I am going through something similar to this right now. I got my Captivate 5 weeks ago and immediately set it up to work with my company's Exchange servers. It worked flawlessly using the stock email client until a few days ago when all syncing stopped dead. I tried a bunch of things to no avail. Finally I deleted the exchange email account on the phone and tried reinstalling. I keep getting the error message "cannot connect to server". I decided to download the Touchdown app and it connects to the server and sets up and syncs great.

So my question is, why did my stock client work fine and now does not, and why is Touchdown able to work using the same setup information and the stock email client does not? I suspect Touchdown handles the lock code communication better (something similar to what baddress describes) but it's frustrating because the stock app worked before with no problem.

Any ideas for fix appreciated.

 

[sremick]

So my question is, why did my stock client work fine and now does not, and why is Touchdown able to work using the same setup information and the stock email client does not?

Touchdown is specifically written for connecting to Exchange, and is an actively-maintained commercial app. The stock client only has token Exchange support that is known to be incomplete and buggy. Even the free K-9 has better Exchange support.

See the Captivate FAQ:
Email - CapFAQ

 

[speedy1979]

Recently my phone would get the dreaded "com.android.email" error message every time I booted up my phone despite the fact that I have never used the androids built-in email client I use MailDroid. So I decided to enable use Titanium Backups "Chuck Norris" found under preferences to uninstall the built-in email client.

 

[fldude99]

Like Powerbug in post 34 I set up my gmail to retrieve my pop email and am pretty happy with the way the gmail client works on the captivate. I never even opened the stock email client. But I see K9 being recommended...short of hijacking the thread, have any gmail users tried K9? Just wondering if it works as well as the gmail client, as my only complaint with it is not being able to change the font size on 2.1

 

[weeber]

Well this stinks. My phone just recently started up with the dreaded "com.android.email stopped unexpectedly error" I came in here hopeful for a solution, but it doesn't look like there is one. I've tried clearing user cache and data, but whenever I try to setup my accounts again, the error just pops up whenever I try to open an email.

I actually liked the stock email app, but I guess I'll try K9.

 

[BookLover]

If any of you have a Task Killer installed try uninstalling that and rebooting. You may have to re-add all the accounts if they were lost prior to the TK uninstall.

TKs that are set on a schedule to kill everything at a certain time can have negative affects on the phone's performance. Usually this is seen in emails/sms weirdness first, then other bad, inexplicable things can happen.

If you feel you *must* have a Task Killer, install Watchdog Lite from the Market and let it notify you to misbehaving apps, and THEN you can decide upon the alert whether to kill the misbehaving app or not. (Watchdog Lite is also a TK, but not an automatic one, *you* have to supply the decision to kill or not to kill).

Read the article in my signature for more info on this, if you have TK installed.

If this is happening without any TKs having been installed...then I have no idea how to troubleshoot, except that I have heard Exchange (and basically any other email account) set up with the stock email app is unreliable.

K9 is free, so that should be your first stop. I've heard good things about Touchdown also. I would NOT recommend CompanionLink (DejaOffice) - was glitchy when I last tried it for simple Desktop to Phone usb sync'ing. Can't imagine the probs you'll encounter with something more complex, like Exchange.