Hey Verizon why did I have to work this out?

Quick Synopsis: Verizon forgot to fill in all the information on its Windows Mobile 6.1 Phones.  Which means after a short period of time they lose the ability to send emails and only fix given is delete the existing email account and recreate.  But after a couple times that’s just annoying… especially for a bug fixed 3 months earlier.

I have a Samsung Omnia i910 from Verizon, and I love it.  the phone is clear, the web browser is Opera Mobile… which means sooner or later we’ll get a flash that works. But works enough for the time being, and the camera is the bomb with crystal clear pictures*.

The only issue I’ve really had besides minor annoyances that I personally had and was able to tweak, was that sending emails after some time would stop working.  I’d get the a popup message that said, “The message(s)
could
not be
sent. Check that
you have
network coverage and
that your account information
was correct. then try sending again.The message(s) could not be sent. Check that you have network coverage and that your account information was correct. then try sending again.“  Verizon had NO clue.  I tried 3 different Customer Service Reps and then a nice long call with a phone Rep before I gave up and did a lot more digging.  The thing was, I had researched lots before this trying to find out why it was happening, and all I found out was that a number of other people with the Omnia (also AT&T i900′s) and HTC models where having this issue.  The only reliable fix had been to delete the email profile, and recreate it.  Well I did this once, to realize this was way too annoying.  So I started stalking Verizon and finally they got me the direct number for Verizon support… which did no better.

Well after even more searching I found Microsoft had patched a Windows Mobile 6.1 bug that left some users unable to send messages until they deleted and recreated their email accounts. And they had made the  “Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch” back in November ’08 [link below]. 

The Windows Mobile 6.1 bug first began surfacing several months ago, on blogs and online forums, including Microsoft’s Windows Mobile support site. According to a variety of posters, the problem occurred on many different Windows Mobile 6.1 devices, including those that were upgraded from Windows Mobile 6 and had previously been able to email without problems.

Posting on the U.K. site “Tracy and Matt’s Blog,” for example, Matt wrote of discovering the frustrating problem in August, after he upgraded his HTC TyTn II to Windows Mobile 6.1. According to Matt, he was able to send one email from his IMAP4 account via SMTP, but every attempt to send email thereafter failed.

As word of the identical problem spread to other online forums, Matt reportedly worked with contacts at Microsoft to resolve it, and eventually even sent his TyTn II to the company. After a few weeks, he received an email from a Microsoft employee, anonymously quoted as calling the bug a “horribly unfortunate side effect” of a feature added to Windows Mobile 6.1.

Because some service providers block sending of email via an SMTP server that is not on their network, a registry key was added to the operating system that lets carriers specify a backup SMTP server, to be used if the user-specified SMTP server fails. If the backup server address succeeds, it apparently becomes the new OS default.

Unfortunately, the Microsoft Windows Mobile team member was reported as adding, the bug rears its ugly head if OEMs do not enter an IP address for a backup SMTP server, as they were meant to do. End users cannot fix the problem by editing the registry key, since it is an OEM-protected key. The only solution, therefore, is deleting and recreating the account — which will reportedly work normally, but only until the next SMTP failure.

[via Microsoft Windows for Devices].

The long and short of it, is that a registry key is left blank, and force replaces the existing information if the phone fails to connect to the set smtp server.  Users had no way to fix this.  So Microsoft added an error checker in a patch so that it’ll check to see if that key is blank.

Thanks to Microsoft’s official fix, the “Windows Mobile 6.1 POP and IMAP Send Mail Patch” restores normal email operation to all Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and Standard devices, according to the company.

To download the official fix in .CAB format, for direct installation on a device, or .MSI format, for installation via Windows Vista or Windows XP PCs, see Microsoft’s website, here.

* The 5 megapixel camera just doesn’t like darkness and low light.  Its flash is pretty bright, but can wash things out if too close.

Tags: AT&T, Cell Phones, Omnia, Omnia i900, Omnia i910, Samsung, Samsung Omnia, Technology, Verizon, Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows Mobile 6.1