iPhone 3.0 E-mail search tests... very nice!
I did some testing this morning of e-mail searching, and I wanted to put together a few findings. All of these are with an original iPhone working on T-Mobile's EDGE network, unlocked, in Chicago.
1) E-mail can be searched in at least three loosely separate ways.
- E-mail can be searched from the full-iPhone search tool (flick left at home screen). This only searches the headers that are on the iPhone. If one scrolls down to the bottom of an inbox and "gets more," then as long as these "get more" messages (allowing you to have >200 messages in one of your inboxes) are on the iPhone, they get searched. Mail with locally stored headers outside the inbox, such as sent mails, seem to get searched too. The search is "instantaneous," taking a few seconds to complete each search with the search results populating over time.
- E-mail can be searched from any mailbox on the iPhone, including any Inbox as well as any Sent Mail or other folders. For folders that are infrequently used, the iPhone will insist on refreshing the folder before the search occurs, just as it used to insist on refreshing the folder before letting you view the contents. On all the server types I tested EXCEPT for Exchange ActiveSync, this was by default only a search on locally stored headers, in real time. This search also only searches in the specific folder currently being viewed. On Exchange accounts, these searches seem to automatically search the server for messages in the folder not stored locally. These searches are fast in my testing (see below).
- Finally, for non-Exchange ActiveSync accounts (IMAP and, I think, POP), once the search is entered, an additional "continue search on server" button comes up at the bottom of the search results. This allows for a search of any message (to/from/subject, no body search) in that folder on the server. These searches are still pretty impressive.
2) All methods of searching search either the to field, the from field, the subject, or all three of the above. No method searches body text.
3) Searches seem possible in any folder the iPhone can see.
4) Here is some test data on my e-mail accounts. Typically, when I did a search, I did a search for one of the oldest e-mails available. So, where I had about 12,000 messages on my GMail, I tried one from back in 2005 that was at the end of my inbox. The results suggest to me that the searching is probably not purely linear, as it seems too fast for that, although it's possible. I have not tried in detail to search messages at various depths to see if that makes a difference.
GMail / IMAP: Searches the server when you request it, 5-25 seconds to find any message out of about 12,000 based on to/from/subject, on EDGE (time measured from clicking Continue Search on Server).
Outlook / Exchange ActiveSync: Seems to search the server automatically. Searches are insane -- finding a message out of 1-2000 messages that are on the server is essentially in real time on EDGE. Granted this server is also here in Chicago, whereas the others are not.
Hotmail / POP: I don't have enough messages (<200) in my Hotmail account to be able to test search on the server. Local searches worked fine.
Yahoo / IMAP IDLE: I have 595 messages on my Yahoo account; searches took 15-30 seconds, but here... I tried several searches for things that were in the to/from or subject and Yahoo did NOT find any of them successfully on the server. Local searches worked fine.
AOL / IMAP: I don't have enough messages (<200) to do a server search; local worked fine.
Outlook via IMAP (not Exchange): There are about 1600 messages in this inbox; server search worked, similar 15-30 seconds to find a message after clicking on the continue button.
So basically, there seems to be a difference in performance between Exchange ActiveSync and IMAP -- they both work, but Exchange is dramatically faster. I haven't been able to get a search on Yahoo's server to work. Questions:
- I cannot do testing on a MobileMe account b/c I don't have one.
- Can anyone confirm whether or not Yahoo server searching works for them?
- Can anyone test a POP inbox with >200 messages for server-side searches?
Overall, I'm very, very impressed by iPhone search! All these tests are on a 1st gen, EDGE, iPhone via data services, too, so many of them are "worst" case, with presumably much better performance on a 3G S on UMTS... which I think itself is quite astonishing. I would not have been surprised if search were useless on the oldest, slowest iPhone, but I think this is not the case at all.
