Help Iphone can't reply to my messages!

[babyblueania]

Hi, Using the exchange server, when I email someone from my phone and they receive the message on their iPhone/iPad exchange server - they can't reply! They can fwd, they can start a new message to me, but they can't reply - it crashes.

Anyone else have this problem? Any solutions?

 

[Revelstoke]

I have the same problem... I'm using the stock email app with my yahoo account. My iPhone user friends can't reply to my emails... it crashes their phones. They have to forward their responses back to me. They don't have this issue with anyone else.

 

[lunatic59]

It's not your problem, it's Apples. There are reports of this all over the Apple forums with a typically silent response from the company.

iOS5 Mail crashing: Apple Support Forums

Some have had success by not including a signature on their emails, but it's not a universal workaround.

 

[NetNoggin]

Our office has 50/50 Android and iPhone users. We're having this problem when iPhones, and iPads reply to emails sent from Androids. The mail accounts are using Active Sync for our corporate Exchange 2007 email server.

The problem only occurs if email is generated from an Android smartphone, and the reply is on iPad or iPhone. It is intermittent but frequent. I have seen the problem from both sides. I had an iPhone, and now I have the very _fine_ Galaxy Note. Unfortunately, co-workers with iPhones (about half the company) are less likely to respond to my emails due to the crashes. We're an IT integrator so we're in the field most of the time, and work from our mobiles about 85% of the time. Surprisingly I haven't heard of customers complaining about this yet. Perhaps it is only certain configurations. We're seeing it from Galaxy S IIs (Sprint), and Galaxy Notes (AT&T) both running the stock Gingerbread. No one has rooted their work phones.

Trying to use Google to search for discussions isn't easy either since the search terms are so common, as are threads discussing crashing Android email clients.

I still have my iPad and I just upgraded it to iOS 5.1. I'll do some more experimenting and try to learn more about the problem.

 

[NetNoggin]

...
iOS5 Mail crashing: Apple Support Forums....

You got me excited by that link. I had hope of finding the cause, or at least where to lay the blame. I only skimmed over the first few pages but that thread seems to be about a different problem. The word 'Android' isn't in the first 5 pages.

 

[lunatic59]

The Android devices aren't crashing and they can reply to email, correct? It's only the iDevices that are crashing when replying to email.

 

[NetNoggin]

Yes. For sure.

I guess I've just seen enough malformed email headers, etc... (which I don't pretend to understand), that cause mail clients to crash. That used to be a form of attack; it may still be. I'm not yet leaning either way on this. It may be a compound problem. Perhaps with certain settings, or content and the Android mail client creates a message that isn't perfectly in spec. Perhaps the iOS mail client is easily crashed by emails created a certain way. To my (limited) knowledge of this problem only the iOS devices are experiencing this crash and I think that is probably the most telling aspect of this. But remember, only Androids are creating the messages that cause the effect.

 

[lunatic59]

It is the client that controls the format of the composition. As a test, try a different email client on the Android phone and see if it still crashes the iOS client. It may be a combination of formatting and the crazy things exchange does to mail.

 

[NetNoggin]

It just occured a way to perform one test. I know a specific message that caused the effect. The message is probably still in the inbox of one or more users that it crashed. If I can find an iOS device user with 5.01 and ask them try to crash their client by replying, then have them upgrade to 5.1 and try again with the same message we will know if Apple quietly fixed their email client.

 

[NetNoggin]

Confirmation! Well, tenative confirmation; its on two seperate devices with different versions of the iOS. I sent a colleague an email that crashes his iOS 5.01 iPad, but not his iOS 5.1 iPhone. I know from experience that these emails will crash both iPads and iPhones with 5.01. He's going to upgrade his iPad to 5.1 and try replying to the message. I cannot crash my own iPad w/5.1.

It looks to me that Apple quietly fixed this problem with their email client. Seems to me that I recall old versions of Outlook Express and Office Outlook that could be exploited by emails crafted in a certain way. Microsoft was open about the problem and its resolution.

 

[NetNoggin]

Update: He upgraded the iPad 2 that was exhibiting the crash-on-reply from iOS version 5.01 to 5.1 and the problem is gone.

iOS 5.01 = problem replying to emails from Android users.
iOS 5.1 = no problemo