From their homepage:
4SmartPhone is experiencing technical difficulties. This is causing inflated loads on some of the machines, as a result making our website unresponsive.
Our technical personnel are diligently working towards resolving this issue. Due to these issues, the 4SmartPhone website will be temporarily unavailable.
We are well aware of the situation and so we ask you to not send an email to support. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We will keep all of you updated as often as we can.
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Both the Outlook Web Service, the normal Exchange Service, and the Push Mail Service have all been unavailable for over 48 hours and I'm starting to wonder if they're going to be coming back at all.
AND --- this is the second time this has happened within 2 months.
Drat.
Dwimmerlaik said:
From their homepage:
Both the Outlook Web Service, the normal Exchange Service, and the Push Mail Service have all been unavailable for over 48 hours and I'm starting to wonder if they're going to be coming back at all.
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I stupidly thought that my device was having problems so I removed the 4smarphone settings (which removed all my email/contacts/tasks/calendar entries from my PDA)... Got home and found out OWA and Outlook sync didn't work either. So I'm stuck!
This is pretty bad... they haven't answered my support email and the website notice - simply stating only the 'website' only is down - is highly unprofessional.
I wonder whether it has anything to do with their recent upgrade to Exchange 2007?
It looks like the service is back online as of 5:00 PM Pacific. I received the following in an email message:
Dear 4SmartPhone Customer,
Over the past two days we have experienced a rather serious crash on one of our Exchange Servers.
We are very sorry for any inconvenience this problem has caused you, but we are pleased to report that we have fixed the problem and taken all steps to ensure it will not happen again. Here are some things you will notice in the next few days:
1) Although it is now possible to connect to your mailbox again, it will only contain your new emails.
2) You can now send and receive emails.
3) Within the next few days, we will bring all original emails back on the Server.
4) Pro & Enterprise Clients can use their local copy in Offline Mode, and you must switch to connected mode to send & receive email. We will send a link to help you understand in a following email.
5) In addition, we are taking the following steps concerning the current Exchange 2003 servers: 4SmartPhone is rolling out more reliable Exchange 2007 on a brand new architecture; The fact that Exchange 2007 is more robust and combined with the new architecture, any failure are less likely, simpler and faster to recover from should we have to.
4SmartPhone sincerely appreciates your business. To demontrate our appreciation, your patronage, patience and trust in our service, we would like to extend a free month's service to you. We will automatically add the free month onto your contract. If you have any additional questions, please email us at [email protected] ,
Thank you.
4SmartPhone IT staff.
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I've been able to access new mail in my mailbox since around 5:00 PM Pacific, but all of my old mail is missing (as they indicated in thier message). I suspect it'll get populated from backups over the next day or so.
Not only is all the old mail missing, EVERYTHING is missing, CONTACTS, CALENDAR, MAIL.
EVERYTHING!
Anyone got there data back already? I still haven't and I am starting to get worried.
I haven't either.
If you access your accout via Outlook, then you probably already have a backup of your data in your OST file (file used by Outlook to store a local "cached" copy of your mailbox). I've been considering just exporting all of the data from my OST file into a PST file and then importing it into the new mailbox; however, I'm concerned that doing so may complicate the data migration 4Smartphone already has planned since the current mailbox is really only a "temporary" one.
Any Exchange experts want to comment??
Oh my gosh that sound horrible! 48 hours plus down! I have given 4smartphone.net a couple of trials in the past but always ended up going with other services, mainly due to the lack of a control panel with some extra user settings at 4smartphone.
Thank goodness I did not sign up!
Although I have used a fair few Exchange services I am definitely not an expert. This is critical stuff and I would not want to give incorrect advice. But to attempt a little reassurance, 4smartphone state in their FAQ that they run a full real-time "mirror" back-up of all data, plus an additional daily tape backup for long term protection.
It is almost certain that ALL data will be restored to your accounts, but they are a big company and with a lot of data. If they were down for 2 days this could take several more (at least) to fix and fully restore everything.
Also, most email servers keep attempting delivery for about 2 days, so messages that could not get through should still arrive... hopefully. Worst case they will bounce back to the sender with a message saying they couldn't be delivered so people know there was a outage and will hopefully resend.
Once you have data back I would suggest looking at other services... and I would try and pick one that specifies they have co-location if possible i.e Datacenter 1 is in Phoenix, Datacenter 2 mirrors everything in Norway or where ever.
I have used 1 and 1. I would not call them "good" and customer support is extremely weak. But they do have servers in the US, the UK and Germany. It would be quite hard for them to lose all their systems as they are just so huge. But I am sure there are much better services. I guess another reason I might pick 1 and 1 over 4smartphone is 1 and 1 let you have Outlook right away and it doesn't interfere with your right to cancel if you are dissatisfied. They also bill in just 3 month blocks. 4smartphone make you pay for the full year before you get Outlook. Many handhelds still only come with Outlook 2002 so many people really need at least the 03 version or it is not possible to check out the account properly (You have to have 03 at least to fully use the features of Exchange)
Take this is a reminder to have your own independent back up stategies. For example, I do not have my various domains registered with the same companies that do my hosting... I have an account with a domain reg company seperately. That way, if the hosting crashes, I can quickly set up another account elsewhere and point my DNS records at the new nameservers.
I also do not use Exhange as my primary account. My email accounts are hosted elsewhere and forward to Exchange for Direct Push. So I just have it for Push and as an archive. I have everything on my PC too.
Actually, I go one step further, I don't actually use Outlook for email (other than Push. It is probably a great email client at this point, but it has not always had a stellar history. I prefer Thunderbird. That's just me.
I also always retain offline data on my local PC and back it up every day or so (if only by dragging a copy of outlook.ost to another folder and dating it).
I also use a back up program on my handheld and use it daily.
If my Exchange hosting crashed with a total loss, all I would lose is the ability to use direct push temporarily. I would not lose a grain of data.
End of the day, there is only one person who really truly cares about your data and can take charge of protecting it.. YOU! Don't leave that solely to anyone else!
Sound like hell. Sympathies to all involved. Hope it is fully resolved very soon.
Edit: Here is the link to the list of MS Hosted Exchange Partners on their website. Might be useful to anyone considering looking at other providers:
http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/solutions/catalog.aspx
Thanks for you detailed answer.
Actually, I DO have a backup. A REAL backup, not just the OST file. The last few days will be missing tho. I guess I will survive.
4smartphone ain't half bad WHEN it works. And even this crash would not have been so bad, if they just had kept us informed. They have not responded to 3 mails I sent. I understand they will have been inundated with mail, but then they should just post some kind of LATEST NEWS or UPDATE or whatever on their site.
Anyway, they just sent me a mail stating that all data WILL be restored, but that it could take another 48 hours.
Thanks again.
flamingcrumb said:
It is almost certain that ALL data will be restored to your accounts, but they are a big company and with a lot of data. If they were down for 2 days this could take several more (at least) to fix and fully restore everything.
---
Take this is a reminder to have your own independent back up stategies. For example, I do not have my various domains registered with the same companies that do my hosting... I have an account with a domain reg company seperately. That way, if the hosting crashes, I can quickly set up another account elsewhere and point my DNS records at the new nameservers.
I also do not use Exhange as my primary account. My email accounts are hosted elsewhere and forward to Exchange for Direct Push. So I just have it for Push and as an archive. I have everything on my PC too.
I also always retain offline data on my local PC and back it up every day or so (if only by dragging a copy of outlook.ost to another folder and dating it).
I also use a back up program on my handheld and use it daily.
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Mail2web also down!?!?!
Last night mail2web was also down. I had experienced huge delays (of hours!!!) and some message skipping.
Something weird is going on in the mail service providers kingdom!
mail2web down as well??!! That is freaky. Is this a 2007 upgrade induced horror that is going to bite us all? Hopefully I am just being paranoid (I do tend to be!).
nispen, I do apologize if it sounded like I was wagging my finger like you didn't know to back up your stuff! Of course you do - and that wasn't what I meant. I was sincerely symphathesing and that was about the only half-constructive thing I could throw in
I completely agree that communication from the company is key. ANY service, can have a crisis, no matter how good their continency plans. If they do a really good job keeping customers in the loop when it happens it could even leave me feeling positive about them. It would be more like, "wow this is bad, but these guys do care and I can see they are really breaking a sweat to fix this and it makes me trust them to resolve a crisis... which will inevitably happen to every company sometime".
But the generic "sorry for any inconvenience " notices would tick me off. I would want to hear regular updates with more specifics. Wouldn't even matter if I didn't understand the tech jargon involved. I just want to know that hour by hour they know what they are doing and are making specific progress.
Good to hear your data is going come back. Best of luck
No worries, no fingerwagging detected!
flamingcrumb said:
nispen, I do apologize if it sounded like I was wagging my finger like you didn't know to back up your stuff! Of course you do - and that wasn't what I meant. I was sincerely symphathesing and that was about the only half-constructive thing I could throw in
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mail2web has been down since last Thur, and the outage continues, just got a reply from [email protected] saying they are still "trying" to fix the problem. So if 4smartphone is down and mail2web is down at around the same time, may be both of them have upgraded to MS Exchange 2007 at around the same time. If so, that say so much about Ex 2007 and WM5 push email, it is far from a mature and stable product.
Blackberry then has nothing to fear for the rest of this year.
For the non-Blackberry folks, IMAP IDLE is the way to go, it is fast and reliable, and almost free.
And for the less time discerning/sensitive folks, POP is the way to go. Just set the auto retrieval to every 5 min or 10 min.
Mail2web/4Smartphone vs. Blackberry vs. Idle vs...
I am also here strugling with mail2web. After my subscription, the first two weeks were ok, but then last week (or maybe in the end of the week before) it all started to fail.
The service is intermitent now. And delays of up to 3 hours are common.
I've used BB Connect but could not make it work in WM6 roms (I now there is a how-to-hack available, but I could not handle it alright). Also, I do not like much that BB Connect steals my GPRS connection and that whenever I want to use other network applications I have to disconnect from blackberry.net APN and connect to my operators'.
So I prefer to make a redirection of my work emails to another account.
That account could be an IMAP idle capable I have, but the problem is that poutlook does not handle idle and I didn't like much to have poutlook AND another client such as the good flexmail (which is a complete but also heavy app).
So I am now stuck here with not many options, except hoping that mail2web staff manages to overcome the difficulties they currently have. If the service works alright, I believe I would certainly upgrade my free subscription and begin using only mail2web as my 2nd email address...
Some very valid points being raised here which are worthy of more discussion. May I suggest we maybe think about breaking this up into separate threads though for clarity? This thread is essentially an immediate check in as to which Exchange servers are giving people grief (and it sounds like a rough ride, many sympathies to those affected).
Blackberry does seem robust, but I am not clear about it's full capabilties when used on WM devices. Be gr8 to discuss it more so I can learn!
Exchange has has some very powerful features (if it is working) but there is just as much I dislike about it! Only being able to send from one email address and frequent false positives for Spam when it's mail is received by some Linux based mail servers are among my gripes!
IMAP IDLE is cool. My experience is limited to vgsmail/ppc and Webis Flexmail. vgsmail is still sold I believe but not longer developed and I have found it very incomapatible with my more recent devices. I also bought Flexmail but found it very buggy at the time. To be fair it is being actively developed still further and supported and is sure to get better - may have done so already. I have also found that there seems to be slightly different deployments of IMAP IDLE and not all servers appear to give equal results... that is all way beyond my technical grasp though.
Then again there are also Exchange alternatives (not sure how they do on push) like - I might have these names wrong, Zimbra, Open X-change (or something like that. Plus there is SyncML and Funambol ( I know I have that spelled wrong.. someone please help me!).
What do you good people think! Should we maybe split this into threads (or even make use of existing ones and share the links around so we all know where to look?). I would really like to be able to review the options, but it would also be good to keep this forum fasirly organized and readable!
Anyone know where the Device Type is kept for HTC's Exchange stuff?
Currently it sends my device over to the Active Exchange network as "HTCHero" I'd prefer if it did not do this. I'd like it to present itself as a more secure device like... 'iPhone'
Right now I'm using TouchDown Pro and it will do this for me... and for the most part I like touchdown except that it's horribly ugly. I'd like the ability to use the phone's exchange integration again if I felt like going back.
Not sure if your Hero is rooted yet, but if it is, someone could probably baksmali/smali the .apk and change the activesync device string it returns.
I can't get mine to even link up with my gmail account.
You know what you are suppose to put when it asks you for the domain and server info?
With out starting a new thread here, and on the topic of exchage. Does anyone know how to remove an email from the device and not the server?? My blackberry gave me the option. Maybe a "Download a Copy" setting?
I have this posted in 3 other forums and no one is responding.
My technophobe, not-very-young parents just bought two HTC Desire S handsets as I drag them into the smartphone age.
I'm going to install CyanogenMod 7, firstly because it's what I run on my Desire HD, and secondly because I think it will be clearer and easier for them to get to grips with than Sense. If you feel I'm wrong, please speak now.
They currently have a single Google account which they use on their PC for mail, calendar, and Picasa. (They do most things together.)
Would it be an intrinsically bad idea to let them both use the existing shared account on their new phones? the only obvious downer I can see is that if one of them reads a new email, the other will see it as read in the list but they tell me they can live with that.
The alternative is to set up two new accounts and:
1) Set the old email account to forward new mails to the two new accounts.
2) Perhaps set the new accounts to Cc each other whenever mail is sent.
It feels clunky though. Any opinions on whether they shoul both use the single shared account for all, or just for some services e.g. calendar?
I am going to give my wife my Lumia 900 is there a way I can just delete my Live email from the device so she doesn't have to read my emails, she likes all my apps and I think you are entitled to like 2~3 devices under one Live ID. Is this an option or something that I can only do on my Kindle account
A) There really isn't any way. You could disable the email syncing for the account, but it would still be there in Settings, waiting to be re-enabled.
B) The Windows Live ID (now Microsoft Account) terms of service are very clear on this: you may *not* share your account. While apps may be installed on multiple device under the same account, that's only technically permitted if they are used by the same person (think somebody who reviews phones, or is upgrading from an old one, or something like that). You are supposed to hard-reset the phone and set it up with the new owner's Microsft Account when transferring it.
Of course, attempting to *enforce* those TOS are another matter entirely. The decision is in your hands.
Not a biggie really just thought it would be easier to have useful apps installed, buying the like 5 paid apps is nit a big deal.
Sent from my RM-820_nam_att_100 using Board Express
While I'm a huge fan of Google products and services, there attitude of ignoring the masses when it comes to certain features that everyone wants/needs in the name of 'it's better' the way we designed it gets frustrating.
I'm hoping someone here knows a solution to this:
My contacts [not even the same name] keep getting merged/linked together automatically. It's happened on every Android device I've owned, and it's always happened to completely different names. I keep my contacts meticulously organized, and would never have a duplicate that would even need to be linked together. I've sent emails to Google asking how to disable it, etc. and they tell me it's a feature that everyone likes basically.
The most recent linking disaster was it linked my current girlfriend 'Lisa' with my ex-girlfriend 'Elizabeth' with TOTALLY DIFFERENT last names...WTF? So when I hit the dial button on the contact clearly labelled 'Lisa', and with her picture...I was actually calling my EX! Needless to say this led to a long argument that there was no way I could accidentally call me ex when trying to call my girlfriend, and blaming it on Google is ridiculous.
It's done this with a contact 'David', my then boss...and a contact labelled Dad...so when I tried calling work at 2AM (when I start) I actually woke up my dad in the middle of the night. There is no way of knowing when this happens unless I manually check every contact to see if there has been any merging or memorize everyone's phone number so I can see if it's really dialing the right number. It even linked my friend Charles, with Les Schwab Tire store once before.
Anyway, everything I've searched on the subject says that there should be some sort of notification asking me if I want to link/merge contacts, and to make sure to select 'NO'. I've never been notified though, and just get surprised at least once a month when my phone calls someone else, when I select a contact to dial.
Whoever knows the answer will save my life!
Thanks
JVogler said:
While I'm a huge fan of Google products and services, there attitude of ignoring the masses when it comes to certain features that everyone wants/needs in the name of 'it's better' the way we designed it gets frustrating.
I'm hoping someone here knows a solution to this:
My contacts [not even the same name] keep getting merged/linked together automatically. It's happened on every Android device I've owned, and it's always happened to completely different names. I keep my contacts meticulously organized, and would never have a duplicate that would even need to be linked together. I've sent emails to Google asking how to disable it, etc. and they tell me it's a feature that everyone likes basically.
The most recent linking disaster was it linked my current girlfriend 'Lisa' with my ex-girlfriend 'Elizabeth' with TOTALLY DIFFERENT last names...WTF? So when I hit the dial button on the contact clearly labelled 'Lisa', and with her picture...I was actually calling my EX! Needless to say this led to a long argument that there was no way I could accidentally call me ex when trying to call my girlfriend, and blaming it on Google is ridiculous.
It's done this with a contact 'David', my then boss...and a contact labelled Dad...so when I tried calling work at 2AM (when I start) I actually woke up my dad in the middle of the night. There is no way of knowing when this happens unless I manually check every contact to see if there has been any merging or memorize everyone's phone number so I can see if it's really dialing the right number. It even linked my friend Charles, with Les Schwab Tire store once before.
Anyway, everything I've searched on the subject says that there should be some sort of notification asking me if I want to link/merge contacts, and to make sure to select 'NO'. I've never been notified though, and just get surprised at least once a month when my phone calls someone else, when I select a contact to dial.
Whoever knows the answer will save my life!
Thanks
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I've never noticed this...what version of Android are you on and what phone do you have?
In haven't seem it either...are you talking about the "merge duplicate" feature? Did you happen to leave the first or last name blank?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app
electricpete1 said:
In haven't seem it either...are you talking about the "merge duplicate" feature? Did you happen to leave the first or last name blank?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using xda app-developers app
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It's happened on my Atrix running GB, also on my Note running ICS. It's happened to 3 other people's phone I know.
I think you might be on to something...it does seem to happen most often to names where I have no last name entered. It merged 'Lisa' with no last name to "Elizabeth" with a last name. It has merged 'Dad' with quite a few different names beginning with D.
They are not merged/linked when viewing contacts on the web in gmail...they are still separate there. It just merges them on the phone only. The most recent one I can't figure out the algorithm behind thinking these were duplicates and merging them automatically was: [Lowe's] and my friend [Lana], Hit her picture from my favorites menu, and got the Lowe's Home Improvement store. Her picture was displayed on the dialing screen and everything. Had to go into contacts, choose 'un-link', and sure enough it had automatically merged to two contacts after sitting separately for years.
This isn't Google. This behaviour is of the stock contacts applications by Motorola and Samsung. Each one modifies the Google contacts app in their own way, especially with regard to linking of contacts and social networking. You'll be better off asking in your device forum to see if others are facing this issue, and contacting Motorola or Samsung about it. It doesn't happen on AOSP Android ROMs, and on pure Android devices like the Nexus line.
trenches oriedto
sashank said:
This isn't Google. This behaviour is of the stock contacts applications by Motorola and Samsung. Each one modifies the Google contacts app in their own way, especially with regard to linking of contacts and social networking. You'll be better off asking in your device forum to see if others are facing this issue, and contacting Motorola or Samsung about it. It doesn't happen on AOSP Android ROMs, and on pure Android devices like the Nexus line.
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This is definitely the best advice. I had this problem when I got the original Evo which was running Sense. Your phone might be trying to link similar contacts as well as facebook contacts if you've logged into the facebook app and let it sync contacts. I recommend going directly to your Google Contacts and doing a bit of organizing and cleaning. Once you have that cleaned up it will hopefully not mis-link your contacts again, even when you log into facebook or something like that.
h0phead said:
This is definitely the best advice. I had this problem when I got the original Evo which was running Sense. Your phone might be trying to link similar contacts as well as facebook contacts if you've logged into the facebook app and let it sync contacts. I recommend going directly to your Google Contacts and doing a bit of organizing and cleaning. Once you have that cleaned up it will hopefully not mis-link your contacts again, even when you log into facebook or something like that.
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Right. I did that when I first got my phone. I named all my contacts properly (First name, Last name) so the Sense Facebook sync linked my Facebook contacts correctly. If you want to keep nicknames rather than formal names, then adding all your contacts' email addresses from Facebook will also link them correctly regardless of name. Even if your email addresses and contact names don't match with Facebook, you have an option of manually going through all your contacts and linking them (in HTC Sense). You'll only need to do that once as Sense stores an '< HTCdata >' tag in the 'Notes' field of each contact indicating which Facebook contact it is linked to, so any future sync will immediately link the contacts based on this tag. The best Facebook sync app for AOSP ROMs, HaxSync, also makes use of these tags.
Organizing your Google contacts just once in your life goes a long way.
Sent from my Desire HD using xda premium