iPhone News Updated

The article that you can read below was submitted by iPhone World reader John Lockwood. “I like (too) many others am experiencing a problem with my iPhone which leads to the battery being drained in a couple of hours,” he writes, and suggests the following solution below, which can only be classified as a temporary fix until Apple corrects the situation. Thanks, John!

*****
See amongst others
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6353508
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6481497
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6531995
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1387332

In my case, the case of my boss, and the case of a friend, all of us are having this problem and it is due to a major IMAP fault. The problem started with firmware 1.1.3 and still exists in 1.1.4.

What happens is that the iPhone connects to the IMAP account, gets the message headers for the new messages successfully and then starts to get the two line message summary at which point it gets stuck. Visually on the iPhone what you will see is the initial connecting messages at the bottom of the screen will disappear, but the activity spinning symbol at the top next to the WiFi or EDGE network signal, stays spinning (and spinning and spinning…). Once the iPhone is stuck it will remain so until either :-

a) the battery is completely flat, or
b) your turn it off, or
c) you turn Air Plane mode on, or
d) if you can you disconnect the IMAP session at the mail server end.

I have been doing a lot of investigation in to this and last night was able to arrange access to a mail server when it was reasonable quiet (so I could more easily see the iPhone activity without distractions), and was able to turn on debug level logging of the session.

I have previously been able to see (with no other WiFi devices active) that continuous traffic was coming from the iPhone when this happened.

Now, I can show you the relevant entries from the mail server which clearly points the guilty finger at the iPhone’s IMAP software.

696 is the IMAP session number, and 285, 286 and on all the way to 1667 is the command sequence number issued during that session. So the iPhone connected via IMAP as session 696, and repeated the same command hundreds and hundreds of times in just a couple of minutes before I stopped it. As you will also see it is asking for the same message number each time 15011277, in other words it is stuck in a loop.

{IMAP}D 28/3/08 19:49:42 Command Received
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: <- 285 uid fetch 15011277 BODY.PEEK[3.HEADER]<32.3345>
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: -> * 430 FETCH (UID 15011277 BODY[3.header] {32}
Content-Type: …
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: -> 285 OK UID FETCH completed
{IMAP}
{IMAP}D 28/3/08 19:49:42 Command Received
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: <- 286 uid fetch 15011277 BODY.PEEK[3.HEADER]<32.3345>
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: -> * 430 FETCH (UID 15011277 BODY[3.header] {32}
Content-Type: …
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: -> 286 OK UID FETCH completed
{IMAP}
.
. this repeats indefinitely, after just a couple of minutes it is already in the thousands as you can see
.
{IMAP}D 28/3/08 19:51:05 Command Received
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: <- 1667 uid fetch 15011277 BODY.PEEK[3.HEADER]<32.3345>
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: -> * 430 FETCH (UID 15011277 BODY[3.header] {32}
Content-Type: …
{IMAP} IMAP Server 696: -> 1667 OK UID FETCH completed

This happens with both a QuickMail Pro server, and a Kerio Mail Server (both latest versions), it used to happen for me with Google GMail IMAP under firmware 1.1.3 but has not happened since I went to firmware 1.1.4.

Because the iPhone is continuously sending commands, the mail server will not consider the connection idle and time it out, as far as the mail server is concerned they are all legitimate requests. Because the iPhone is continuously sending commands, the iPhone WiFi (or EDGE) transmitter is constantly working and therefore constantly draining the battery. This also explains why the iPhone gets very hot (because it is working flat out).

I am trying to get Apple to acknowledge this problem. I have previously tried deleting the email account, completely resetting and reloading the iPhone including firmware, and a friend even had his completely swapped four times. It would be helpful if other victims could try and get similar evidence and also report this to Apple.

It is so bad I have had to turn my IMAP account off completely.