Can anyone clarify how Samsung devices handle email notification sounds?

[Ichinisan]

Trying to help someone over the phone with a Samsung Galaxy S4 and a Samsung tablet of some kind. He said email notification sounds stopped working on both devices and also in Outlook on his custom-built Win10 computer.

The computer keeps playing a loud sound when I send a test message (it sounds loud to me, over the phone), but he describes it as a "faint sound" -- so I think he has difficulty hearing. I don't think he knows about the volume buttons on the side of his device. He didn't seem know what I was describing ("buttons on the side"). He checked some system settings and saw separate adjustments for sounds and notifications/alerts. He made sure it was at max.

My 4th test message never came through on the tablet until he rebooted it. Does the email app have stability problems? We had tried to refresh several times after that message appeared in Outlook, but the tablet only received it after rebooting.

- Maybe Outlook automatically marked the message as "read" and a new message appearing on the IMAP server only generates an alert on the mobile devices when it's an unread message?

- Maybe Samsung devices only play an alert sound if you leave the email app? Maybe it's a glitch and it only loses "focus" when you load another app instead of just returning to the home screen?

 

[shabby]

Trying to help someone over the phone... I don't think he knows about the volume buttons on the side of his device. He didn't seem know what I was describing ("buttons on the side").

Good luck, i can't stand dealing with people like this.

Try teamviewer, there's a version for samsung devices.

 

[Ichinisan]

Well, I think this issue has something to do with Samsung's cloud services. I've encountered devices before where I somehow determined that the email app wasn't really fetching the emails. The account settings are stored in a Samsung cloud system that fetches messages on behalf of the device and sends notifications to update that device. It's done in a transparent way that's meant to make it *seem* like the email account settings are on the device and the device is fetching the messages.

I've encountered cases when IMAP email accounts on Samsung devices stopped showing new messages. There was never any error message. Removing and re-adding the account would fix it temporarily, but the problem would return in 1 or 2 days.

I suspect a similar glitch is happening here. At one point while troubleshooting, the tablet wouldn't get an email message several minutes after the other devices did, and manual sync/refresh wouldn't do anything. We had to reboot it to see the newest test message.

I got hands-on with the tablet today and checked a dozen things. Everything looks right with the settings, but I didn't remove or re-add the account.

 

[lxskllr]

I use K9, and every account I have notifications on notify me of new mail. It's a good program, but I wouldn't like helping a dummy install and configure something like that. It's not hard, but...