[ubizmo]

I have occasionally sent emails with photo attachments, in conditions where network connectivity was sketchy or intermittent. Sometimes, I'll get the red X in my folder, indicating that the email didn't get sent, and giving me the opportunity to resend it.

The trouble is, most of the time the mail actually *did* get sent.

I'm using the beta 4.5 OS at the moment, but I don't think that's the cause, because I saw this same behavior with 4.2. Any ideas as to what causes this?

[kjjb0204]

Are you on BES and Outlook? Maybe your Outlook limits have been reached, in which case the Exchange server would block outgoing emails and would send a reject to your BB. Odd thing is sometimes it actually still goes through.

[ubizmo]

No, I'm on BIS. The bottom line is that when I see that red X, I don't know whether the message got sent or not.

I actually think the BB should be smart about this, and should try to send the mail when service is restored, instead of timing out. This is one of the things that the Sidekick (allegedly a toy) did better. If I composed a mail and clicked Send, the device would keep at it until it was sent, with no further intervention by me. On long flights, I could queue up a number of emails in the Outgoing folder, and when we reached our destination and could turn wireless service back on, they'd all get sent. But that's a separate matter. The problem at hand is the tendency to get "false negatives" in the form of a red X.

[kjjb0204]

hmmm, not sure then. I never see the red X on my BIS outgoing emails, only on my BES account when my outlook is full.

[ubizmo]

I'm returning to this thread because the problem persists. In fact, it's worse. When I made the original post, I'd only get the red x when my data connection was dicey. Now it sometimes happens when I have excellent connectivity. It only happens when I have audio or photo attachments. Yesterday, I attempted to send an audio note as an attachment. I attached the file and pressed "send" and got the red x within a couple of seconds. Signal strength was four bars and stable. I pressed "resend" and again got the red x within 2 seconds. "Unknown error". I had, however, a BCC in this email, directing it to my yahoo account. Sure enough, not long after I got a copy of the email back, so it did get sent, on either the first or second try, but not both.

This is a fairly frequent problem, and a serious one. As I said in the first post, it happened at times with OS 4.2. It seems to happen more now. The trouble, obviously, is that if I send an email, with attachment, and get the red x, I don't really know if I need to resend. There have been times when I got the red x several times in succession, and did resend, and it turned out that the email was delivered multiple times.

As a general thing, in switching from the Sidekick to the BB Curve, I've been happy with email performance. To a large extent the BB reputation is built on email performance. I'm surprised and disappointed to discover that in some respects the Sidekick's email performance is better. I never got these "false negatives" with the Sidekick. Moreover, failed sends were rare, because the system automatically took care of resending packets until the message was successfully delivered. I could, and frequently did, compose multiple email messages on the Sidekick when I had no data connectivity at all. When I pressed "send" I could be confident that when I did have data connectivity, the emails would get sent, even if it was hours later. On the SK, I could compose a dozen emails on a long flight, with radio turned off, and press "send" and they would be queued and ready to go. When we were allowed to turn the wireless back on, the emails would get sent, with no further effort from me. I could queue up multiple emails with photo attachments, in dicey reception areas. It might take hours, but eventually they'd all get sent. That simply isn't possible with the BB.

This isn't meant to be a "SK is better" rant. There are other things that the BB does better, such as sync of deleted mail on the server. But the way in which the BB handles mail sending, especially with attachments, isn't as robust as it could be, and this is a concern.

[heffman]

...hmm. Does it always send when you get the "x"? If so, sounds like it is requing and sending. Like its supposed to.

[Berry One]

Yes, for BBs sending emails with attachments is somewhat a new trick. No so long ago blackberries didn't have camera - sending photo attachments was not a feature.

Also, blackberries are tightly integrated with some ISPs like Yahoo and GMail, what you see could have been not blackberry's fault but ISP unwilling to accept too large file.

Can you be more specific in how you are sending these photos and voice notes? What email address do you send them from: Yahoo, GMail, something else? Does issue happen with just one email address of yours or with all of them? What is the size of a file you are sending - there are limits on size of email you can send.

Do you have blackberry email address? If you do - try sending through it, to exclude ISP issues. If that does not work - escalate to TMO and tell them open ticket with RIM.

[ubizmo]

Originally Posted by heffman

...hmm. Does it always send when you get the "x"? If so, sounds like it is requing and sending. Like its supposed to.

No, it doesn't always resend. There's no way to know, unless I BCC a copy back to myself. Is it supposed to resend the mail with no further attention from me? I wasn't aware of this.

[ubizmo]

Originally Posted by Berry One

Yes, for BBs sending emails with attachments is somewhat a new trick. No so long ago blackberries didn't have camera - sending photo attachments was not a feature.

Also, blackberries are tightly integrated with some ISPs like Yahoo and GMail, what you see could have been not blackberry's fault but ISP unwilling to accept too large file.

Can you be more specific in how you are sending these photos and voice notes? What email address do you send them from: Yahoo, GMail, something else? Does issue happen with just one email address of yours or with all of them? What is the size of a file you are sending - there are limits on size of email you can send.

Do you have blackberry email address? If you do - try sending through it, to exclude ISP issues. If that does not work - escalate to TMO and tell them open ticket with RIM.

I'll experiment a bit. The trouble is, this isn't something I can reproduce at will. The size of the email is always under 2 MB, and quite often under 1 MB. I'm usually sending from a fastmail account, so I should experiment with gmail and yahoo.

[heffman]

Originally Posted by ubizmo

No, it doesn't always resend. There's no way to know, unless I BCC a copy back to myself. Is it supposed to resend the mail with no further attention from me? I wasn't aware of this.

...i do believe there is an email setting that allows you to tell the BB to continue resending until it can get through.

What is the signal strength when this happens? is it edge or EDGE? it wont send messages if the signal is not strong enough.

[ubizmo]

Originally Posted by heffman

...i do believe there is an email setting that allows you to tell the BB to continue resending until it can get through.

What is the signal strength when this happens? is it edge or EDGE? it wont send messages if the signal is not strong enough.

If there is such a setting, I'd like to find it.

Last time this happened was Saturday morning. I was sitting outside with 5 bars EDGE signal. I was sending an email with an audio attachment of about 800 KB. I clicked "send" and within seconds got the red x and "unknown error." I quickly tried "resend" and again got the red x immediately. But the email got to its destination, and I received the BCC a bit later.

As I say, this has happened intermittently since I first got my Curve, in January. I can't force it to happen, however. I know that the larger the attachment, the more likely I am to have this problem, even without hitting or coming near the 5MB limit.

[heffman]

...are the messages being received in full? meaning, is there any packet loss / missing data? since you say that the frequency of the event increases the larger the message size, it could be due to packet loss while transferring the data. hmm...

[ubizmo]

It happened again this morning. I was outdoors, and had five bars signal strength. I know I said in the original post that it was most likely to happen in areas of poor connectivity, but lately I've seen it happen just anywhere. Anyway, signal was excellent, and I attempted to send an email with an audio attachment, about 750 kb. Very quickly, I got the red x, and the email header read:

Folder: Outbox
Message Status: Unknown error

This time, I did not resend. I waited, and soon saw the telltale radio arrows indicating data transfer. A little while later, I received my BCC, indicating the email had been delivered. It's still sitting in my Message folder with a red x, however. If I didn't have the BCC set up, I wouldn't know whether or not it had been delivered. Other times, I've done a resend, and recipients have told me they received duplicates; but still other times when I've resent, they only received one. The core problem is: When I get this red x error, I can't know whether or not my email ever got sent (except by tracking via BCC).

[ubizmo]

A new wrinkle: Yesterday I attempted to send a video clip as an email attachment--something I've done many times before--and after five resend attempts I gave up. It just wouldn't send it. I had excellent signal strength. The clip was 1.3 MB.

It's issues like these, as well as the generally "retro" aspect of BB email, that tempt me to go back to the Sidekick. At least on the Sidekick, once I pressed "send" the mail got sent, with or without attachments, whether or not I had network coverage at the moment. There's a lot to be said for that.

Moreover, this problem with photo or video attachments doesn't appear to be specific to OS 4.5; it happened with OS 4.2 as well.

[dacphilly]

I have this issue on my 8330 once or twice a week. It only happens to me when my device is doing multiple things, ie instant messenger chat, sending an email and recieving data at the same time. If I'm sending an email and get the red x the email is ultimately sent on its own but the x remains. If I'm texting someone and get the x, its not sent and the x remains. I've come to expect this and I'm mindfull of it under heavy usage. I know its not a fix but hope it helps.

[ubizmo]

Thanks....could it be a Philly thing? The trouble is, sometimes the email *isn't* ultimately sent on its own. I agree that this is more likely to occur under heavy usage conditions, but I have to say that it also occurs when I'm doing nothing except sending the email, so it's not strictly a usage thing. In any case, either this thing multi-tasks or it doesn't. If it can't send an email with an attachment while other programs are running then it needs to prompt the user to shut down other programs and try again. But as I say, I'm certain that that's not the root problem, since it sometimes happens when I've done nothing but send the email and put the BB back in my pocket.

[CO_BBTechie]

I would make sure your carrier still supports sending/receiving MMS messages.

Additionally, one thing I found out the hard way, is that if you send a audio clip for example, but delete that clip before the email send operation completes, it will fail. It doesn't seem to "hard attach" to the email.