How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

On a related note, I feel like the iPhone is less "eager" to rotate after being held in the same orientation for a while. E.g. I browse Safari in landscape mode for ten minutes, rotate the phone to portrait, and it takes a few extra seconds for the transition to register.

Anybody else noticed this?

Re: How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

#5

Post by jazzychad » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 2:57 AM UTC

We do the same thing for the Notifo iPhone app, except our "magic number" is 1. If you are the top of the list, new notifications slide in and push the list down. If you are scrolled down past the first notification, new notifications load in, but the list stays still (a non-trivial thing to do with UITableViews). I never knew the mail app did the same thing (I have mine set to refresh manually); it just seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

Re: How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

#6

Post by kessler » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 3:10 AM UTC

This is a great breakdown, thanks. Now can you explain why so often I receive an email on the iPhone and one of two things happens:

1. I'm not in MobileMail.app, get a notification that an email arrives, but when I enter the app, nothing is there. When I manually hit the refresh mail button, the new message downloads and appears.

2. If I'm in MobileMail.app a new email arrives and I see it up top for a few seconds, and instantly it disappears. Again, I have to tap refresh to re-download the message.

Why does this happen?

Re: How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

#7

Post by ugh » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 3:13 AM UTC

jazzychad wrote: post #5

We do the same thing for the Notifo iPhone app, except our "magic number" is 1. If you are the top of the list, new notifications slide in and push the list down. If you are scrolled down past the first notification, new notifications load in, but the list stays still (a non-trivial thing to do with UITableViews). I never knew the mail app did the same thing (I have mine set to refresh manually); it just seemed like…

Twitter’s Mac app does this, too, it also only scrolls if you are not farther down than one tweet. (Automatic scrolling, which is off by default, has to be enabled.)

Re: How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

#8

Post by sp4rki » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 3:22 AM UTC

kessler wrote: post #6

This is a great breakdown, thanks. Now can you explain why so often I receive an email on the iPhone and one of two things happens: 1. I'm not in MobileMail.app, get a notification that an email arrives, but when I enter the app, nothing is there. When I manually hit the refresh mail button, the new message downloads and appears. 2. If I'm in MobileMail.app a new email arrives and I see it up top for a few seconds, a…

Come on man. What does this have to do with the article? In any case, I have had no such problems with my iphones, so I'd say you either got a faulty unit or maybe it's a service provider issue.

Re: How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

#9

Post by jlew » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 3:31 AM UTC

kevinchen wrote: post #3

Very interesting findings. But, can you imagine the author explaining something more complicated?

My thoughts exactly. I was expecting some revolutionary design with the size of the article and the number of images involved.

Note that I am not saying this is a negative at all. I just found it out of the ordinary and not expected. Although, if the target audience was HN, then there was definitely a lot of wasted effort. :)

Re: How the iPhone mail app decides when to show you new mail

#10

Post by ronnier » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 3:32 AM UTC

junofan wrote: post #4

On a related note, I feel like the iPhone is less "eager" to rotate after being held in the same orientation for a while. E.g. I browse Safari in landscape mode for ten minutes, rotate the phone to portrait, and it takes a few extra seconds for the transition to register. Anybody else noticed this?

I keep rotation locked. Can't stand it. I was very happy to see the rotation lock with ios 4, it was very difficult reading in bed before.