Jul 20, '09 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: Aeschylus
After getting my first iPhone (a 3GS), I was happy to see that battery life was relatively good and it accessed the web and email quickly on my home WiFi. It also worked, although a bit slower, on a 3G connection. At work, however, mail seemed to hang and the battery died in about four hours .. oh no!
I found that the phone was continuously trying to retrieve email, but was unable to do so. This not only drained the battery, but seemed to make the entire phone a bit sluggish while it tried forever to connect.
The reason for this is that many companies, mine included, block IMAP mail by blocking ports 993 and 587. Because they use Exchange (I don't want to use my iPhone for their mail, only my personal Gmail), they block many ports that are not directly required by their business in the hopes this will block intruders from their system.
In my case, it is a large company and I am a small part, so they will not unblock their ports. The two workarounds are to turn off WiFi (which slows down the Web, Twitter, and other internet-based apps), or to disable the Gmail account in the Mail app and use a web interface for retrieving my personal email. Neither is a perfect solution, but after all, the WiFi network does not belong to me.
It would help if Apple gave us a way to force the Mail app to use either 3G or WiFi, or to tell Mail app to stop looking to connect if it can't connect quickly. I'd appreciate hearing from any others who have a better solution.
