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bug in iPhone 3G mail app? please verify

C

crayonshin

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 10, 2008
82
0
Japan
I'm pretty sure we've got a bug in iPhone's mail app, at least when the phone's language is set to U.S. English. Here's what happens:

Start a new email. Then write anything you like and end with a period. Now, immediately after the period (no spaces) enter any capital letter. Then hit backspace. It should just delete that last capital letter. Instead, it goes on a deleting spree erasing everything you've written unless you stop it quickly. To stop it you have to hit shift (up arrow) and it will stop.

Can you all please try this and report back? Make sure the letter after the period is a capital. It won't do it if it's lower case. Additionally, what's the best way to file an iPhone bug report with Apple?

EDIT. see below in post #4 where I provide an example. btw, I am on firmware build 5A347.
 
i just did what u said. this is not happening with me. it just deletes my last capital letter i type.

Edit: nm i was able to reproduce the bug, this is a bug indeed.
 
adamdodson said:
Not getting that here either.
Click to expand...

are you sure there's no space between the period and capital letter. here's an example:

This is a bug with the iPhone.Q

then hit backspace to delete just the Q. it will, then keep deleting everything before it unless you stop it with the "shift" key.
 
I just tried those steps and at first I wasn't able to reproduce it but on the second try it worked. For me at least it seems to be intermittent. I'm on a 2G iPhone with 5A347.
 
atluten said:
I just tried those steps and at first I wasn't able to reproduce it but on the second try it worked. For me at least it seems to be intermittent. I'm on a 2G iPhone with 5A347.
Click to expand...

it may be intermittent like you say. i tried my last example, and i let the phone autocomplete the word "iPhone", then I backed up, put in a period immediately followed by a capital...then hit backspace and it correctly deleted just the capital letter. then i tried the same exact thing again and got the bug. maybe it's intermittent when you autocomplete the word then back up??

however, i've been able to consistently reproduce it when i don't autocomplete the word before the period and capital letter.
 
It does exactly that here on 3G w/ latest firmware.

It also happens in Notes, the mail "signature" box under settings, etc. I think everything that has the text correction?
 
I tried this three times and cannot replicate the bug, i even used Iphone.Q, still no luck, on Iphone 3G with latest firmware.
 
crayonshin said:
it may be intermittent like you say. i tried my last example, and i let the phone autocomplete the word "iPhone", then I backed up, put in a period immediately followed by a capital...then hit backspace and it correctly deleted just the capital letter. then i tried the same exact thing again and got the bug. maybe it's intermittent when you autocomplete the word then back up??

however, i've been able to consistently reproduce it when i don't autocomplete the word before the period and capital letter.
Click to expand...

In my case, I typed in the word "Hello" without allowing the phone to autocomplete, so that seems to confirm your findings.
 
Very consistent here just using random letters, such as Qksdfjkhsdjfh.X<backspace>

Even Xy.Z works.
 
crayonshin said:
it may be intermittent like you say. i tried my last example, and i let the phone autocomplete the word "iPhone", then I backed up, put in a period immediately followed by a capital...then hit backspace and it correctly deleted just the capital letter. then i tried the same exact thing again and got the bug. maybe it's intermittent when you autocomplete the word then back up??

however, i've been able to consistently reproduce it when i don't autocomplete the word before the period and capital letter.
Click to expand...

Got it the second time. Annoying!
 
Yes, I have the problem also. It has happened to me before... just couldn't stop it from erasing all my text and had no idea why. I did notice at the time that the shift arrow key was lit up while the extra erasing was in progress. Maybe that means something?

I just tried your example of a CAP letter after a "." (random words/letters) using the Notes application and it was easily reproduced (and the shift arrow key also stayed lit while the erasing occurred). I wish I could remember what I was typing last time this happened to me, I think I was in a search box of some kind and wonder if it was a different scenario, since I can't imagine I was typing a CAP letter. If I have this bug happen again and it ends up being a different scenario, I'll update this thread.

Oh - I have a new iphone 3G with the latest 5A347 firmware.

Thanks for posting and letting us know that it's not just us! :)
c-
 
I'm a "double-space between sentences" guy, so I can't ever see myself doing this on my own. But when I replicated the process, it did the same thing for me -- deleting everything I had just typed!
 
Ha, that was cool :), I just let auto-correct capitalize my stuff for me, so no worries here, but should be reported (which I did)
 
Yes, that happens here too...

Problem solved, double tap spacebar to add a period and a space after sentences.
 
same here, this is crazy :)

Although, I dont see how you would ever get in this situation as after a "period" you would put a space before typing a capital letter.
or you could just tap "space" twice to have the iphone automatically type a period and a space followed by capitalising the next letter you type? thats what I do.

no excuse though, it is deffo a bug that needs a fix! :)
 
Wow.

I tried this and didn't think it was working at first. Then I looked up to hit the reply button on the forum, and when I looked back down my entire note was gone! (Several lines of text).

Good catch. Should be easily fixed though.
 
Confirmed bug, nice find.

Seen as though Apple wants to target the enterprise market with 2.0,
I would think this needs fixing, and fast.

Hopefully in 2.0.1 :rolleyes: (I can hope, right? ...)

R-Fly
 
I got it.. doesn't work on a double space period, but on a period you insert yourself, it erased everything..

Kinda cool
 
johny5 said:
same here, this is crazy :)

Although, I dont see how you would ever get in this situation as after a "period" you would put a space before typing a capital letter.
or you could just tap "space" twice to have the iphone automatically type a period and a space followed by capitalising the next letter you type? thats what I do.

no excuse though, it is deffo a bug that needs a fix! :)
Click to expand...

Am I the only person who goes back to add needed words to sentences or makes corrections before submitting? ;) It happens all the time when editing typed text and making corrections. In fact, I laid out a much more specific/thorough example until it did it to me.

Basically, I had an unintentional line break that I did not notice until I was typing a couple lines beneath it (I noticed that the previous line had broken at a point much earlier than my subsequent lines). It had created this line break between the words, auto-corrected to add a period after the first word, and then auto-capitalized the second one on the new line. Only the unintentional line break might have been directly caused by me. Before resetting my insertion point to fix it, I decided to explain another problem first and then go back to correct it so that I might only have to reset my insertion point once before finalizing and submitting the post. This is something that any PC browser would have handled FLAWLESSLY. Instead, here is what happened: I reset my insertion point before the upper-case letter on the second word and attempted to clear it and the line-break before retyping the letter. It then started back-spacing out of control despite being separated with a line-break. Hitting the caps key canceled but not before back-spacing over several words. I found it to be quite topical and decided to reset my insertion point at the bottom of the post to describe it and encountered the other problem I had just described: If the area you want to type in is not visible in the text box, it is impossible to move the insertion point to it (the magnifying glass will not scroll the text and there are no scroll bars or arrow keys). Luckily, this forum had the ability to enlarge the text area which can sometimes be used to get all text visible within the text box, so I used it (double-down arrows in the toolbar above). I then reset my insertion point at the end by backing out of the text entry on-screen keyboard and tapped to begin entering text at the bottom only to find that the browser crashed after a couple letters.

ARGH! I encountered three common problems when typing ONE FRICKIN' POST and yet it seems that a large amount of people "can't see the problem" in the real-world. There are either a lack of real-world examples or people simply aren't reporting them. Double-tapping space to insert a period doesn't solve the problem, as I have demonstrated. If you use the web at all, you will encounter these problems often. This didn't even mention the common problem with the page scrolling to the top between every typed letter, which happens to me in three out of five forum post message/body text fields (among others; title, email, etc). To be more descriptive, the small view of the text input area jumps to the top of the page and back down with each letter typed.

I got the iPhone 3G for its ubiquitous access to the Internet and the web so that I could stop using Remote Desktop from to connect to my home computer for my video game news and forum posting (from work with a mostly secured Internet connection). Guess how I've been forced to write this post? I tried. I really tried. There was simply no way I was going to risk typing all that AGAIN on an iPhone. It has crashed on me at least four times today alone.
 
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