SPV C500 - Phone hangs after retrieving email via IMAP4

[Guest johnequinox]

Dear Newsgroup

I've just road tested my new SPV C500 phone. I set it up for retrieving email from our Corporate server via the IMAP4 protocol. This appeared to connect and retrieve the mail headers OK, but then never actually disconnects. If I manually select the phone says 'Disconnecting' and then just hangs. The keboard does respond, but it is so slow that it appears to take 5-10 seconds to actually acknowledge a keypress. Even the On/Off button locks up so you can't switch the phone off. In the end I had to resort to taking the battery out every time I picked up mail!!! This was pretty embarressing as I was in an embedded seminar at the time giving a presentation how great the ARM9 processors are!

To reproduce the bug:

Phone: Orange SPV C500

Network: Orange in the UK (using Orange GPRS for email)

O/S: Version: 4.21.1088 build 14132

1. Set up an IMAP4 mail account

- I connected to our Corporate server using an IP address

- Select IMAP4 protocol

2. From the messenging sub-menu, I selected my IMAP4 account.

3. Select

--> phone says 'Connecting...Receiving headers'

--> The headers all seem to come down OK but the new mail is not always displayed.

*** BUG 1 ***

The phone then sits waiting after downloading all the headers, but does not automatically disconnect.

4. If I then select to manually disconnect by selecting

*** BUG 2 ***

However, it does not disconnect at all.

The phone then locks up.

All key presses are very very slow.

The screen only updates eg. once every 5-10 seconds.

The on/off button no longer works.

At this point, the only way I could find to reset the phone was to remove the cover and take out the battery for 30 seconds. Unfortunately, this then lost all the mail I just downloaded !!!

Basically, this couple of bugs makes a very nice little phone absolutely useless for picking up email from corporate servers. I can't see how IMAP4 mail can ever have been tested on this phone before release. I know POP3 is popular but IMAP has many advantages over POP3 and is equally as popular and should be supported properly.

Has anyone else had this problem with IMAP4 mail ?

Is there a firmware fix yet ?

A word of warning about Orange in the UK....

I have now phoned Orange in the UK many times regarding problems with the SPV200 and 500 phones. Every time they seem completely incapable of even acknowledging the problems, never mind putting a plan into place to fix it. I believe Orange part funded the development of this phone, so I find it absolutely staggering that there is no formal way of reporting bugs through Orange about this phone. Does anyone know a proper engineering contact at Orange UK who can help out with C500 bugs ?

As of Friday last week, Orange actually told me that as a company 'We do not support IMAP4 as it is an old protocol which not many people use'. I nearly fell off my seat ! They even quote IMAP4 in their own literature and phone documentation!!! After putting in a formal complaint, they eventually changed their wording to say that their tech support staff had not had any training on IMAP4 and so they could not provide any support for it. However, if I use my IPAQ and the C500 as a modem I can do IMAP4 perfectly via the Orange network. So, Orange do and always have supported IMAP4, they just don't know they do. Utter madness !!!

Anyway, if anyone can shed any light on fixing the C500 IMAP bugs, I would really appreciate it. The C500 is a dinky little PDA phone which could be really useful...if it worked properly !

Thank you in advance for your help.

best regards

John Marriott

[Guest boyo69]

Hi John

not quite the same, but I have had numerous versions of SPV (original, E100, E200 and now C500) and when creating a POP3 account, the first connect and send/receive takes ages..........then, when it has done the initial send/receive, subsequent connections seem to fly

weird! sorry I can't offer anything better than suggesting you leave it connecting for a while to make that first connection

regards

Mark

[Guest johnequinox]

Hi Mark

Thanks for your reply.

Unfortunately, this is a firmware problem in the phone when you select an IMAP account. If I set up a POP3 account, I don't encounter this particular problem.

It looks like whoever has coded the firmware has introduced a bug at the end of retieving the email via IMAP. It should disconnect automatically, but instead it just hangs. If you select the manual option from the menu you just get 'Disconnecting' and the phone then hangs. It's probably just sat there polling a flag to see when the GPRS has disconnected, but it never does. The phone is working but it it is running at eg. 1/20 of it's normal speed so pressing a key takes eg. 10 seconds to acknowledge. As previously explained, the only way out is to remove the battery as the routine to scan the On/Off button apparently doesn't work when the phone gets into this 'slow' mode !

The problem I have is that no one wants to take responsibilty for fixing the bug. It's probably something quite simple, but without a real engineer to look at it will never get fixed. Orange say they do not support IMAP mail which is a real cop out as their network does and so do most of the phones they sell including the C500. All it needs is this problem fixing and the phone would then be a very useful little PDA phone which can talk to a corporate mail server via IMAP.

Please can someone at Orange or the phone manufacturer at least acknowledge the problem ?

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can offer.

John

[Guest chucky.egg]

John

"Mr. Orange" no longer visits this site AFAIK, so your message here is not going to reach O

If you're looking for a firmware update then from past experience the only route is to find other people affected by the same problem and make sure that you all REPEATEDLY report the fault to Orange.

Firmware updates are not always good news though. Some have caused other problems, in true Microsoft fashion, so tread carefully.

[Guest acidlund]

I have set up a POP3 account with check for headers etc. every 5 minutes. Likewise the GPRS does not disconnect afterwards and just stays on. However I CAN make a send/receive on the POP3 account without problems and I CAN disconnect manually by press and hold the "home" button. But I'm sure this was not the intention. I'm sure it's suppose to disconnect after checking for emailheaders ?!

Does anyone have a fix for this ? Did I do something wrong in my setup ?

Ben

[Guest johnequinox]

Hi Chris

Thanks for your post. So I am not alone !

It's ironic as I actually work in the embedded industry and come into contact with the likes of Nokia and Motorola quite a lot. If we have a problem with one of our own products, it is so much quicker just to find and fix the problem than it is to wait for all the flack from customers. A happy customer often buys something else and recommends you to other people!

I don't understand how a company like Orange can part fund the C200 and C500 phones and then not have a formal way of reporting bugs back to the manufacturer. There must have been a beta testing stage and there must be some sort of support contract for fixing bugs...surely...and don't call me surely! Orange actually told me yesterday that they do have ONE person who is allowed to post in this newsgroup but I won't hold my breath! The 'parrots' on the Business Desk (ha ha) at 345 told me that they do not even have a phone number themselves for their own internal Support Department. Oh dear ! No wonder they can't sort out even the most basic problem !!!

Anyway, to sum up:

1. IMAP mail is all but unuseable on a C500

- The phone hangs when disconnecting and the only on/off switch is then the battery compartment. I'm glad these guys aren't designing mission critical stuff !

2. POP3 mail sort of works

- There definitely a problem with the phone displaying the wrong message when you have deleted mail from the mailbox.

- This basically means that you can't rely on POP3 mail as you may not be able to read some mails.

- If you are using the phone for business, it is therefore useless for email pickup as you never know which mail is going to be your next contract.

Re firmware updates

The above problems are phone firmware related, not network or protocol related so the only option is to fix the problem at source which is by debugging the firmware, finding the problems and then releasing new firmware. Do you know who does this ? Is it Orange, Microsoft or someone else ?

All in all, the phone is a waste of space for email unless both IMAP and POP3 are fixed and then rigourously tested. It's no good if it sort of works as you can't relyon it. I can recommend some good phone firmware engineers to fix these problems if required!

I am prepared to take a risk on a new product like the C500 as the concept is brilliant but without a way of reporting bugs it is dead in the water. Orange...and I know you are listening...what have you got to lose by fixing these basic problems ? Think of all the extra GPRS revenue !!!

OK. Thats the rant over. I'm going to have to do some proper work now. Maybe I will get that LED flashing today !!!

Thanks for your help

Cheers

John

[Guest johnequinox]

Hi Ben

This sounds like almost the same problem with IMAP not disconnecting.

If you set up the phone for POP3 to only connect for mail manually, then it does disconnect properly. This appears to be the only 'safe' way to pick up mail from a POP3 account. Hitting the key does work for POP3 but it doesn't work for IMAP...the phone still freezes.

No, you did nothing wrong. It's the phone firmware not disconnecting properly. There is another problem if you regularly poll for mail. If you receive a phone call while the GPRS is active, the phone often hangs. I've actually seen the phone display the incoming number, but it never actually rang. It's obviously too buyst trying to disconnect from GPRS to run the 'Ring Ring' routine.

Nop, this is all very sad. Hopefully they will fix some of these obvious bugs soon. In the meantime it's back to using a Nokia 6310 plus a separate PDA as this works perfectly !

Hope this helps

Cheers

John

I have set up a POP3 account with check for headers etc. every 5 minutes. Likewise the GPRS does not disconnect afterwards and just stays on. However I CAN make a send/receive on the POP3 account without problems and I CAN disconnect manually by press and hold the "home" button. But I'm sure this was not the intention. I'm sure it's suppose to disconnect after checking for emailheaders ?!

Does anyone have a fix for this ? Did I do something wrong in my setup ?

Ben

[Guest oallostavros]

I've got the same extremely slow hanging phone problem as you all, only I'm in the US and using Tmobile - however when my phone crashes it defaults to UK regional settings and i think I saw "orange" on one of the settings once, so maybe my phone problem really does have something to do with orange after all. On the other hand, my phone is ATnT branded on the phone's outside case/cover. So, who knows if its an orange problem vs a general mpx200 problem.