Fortunately, you can prevent iPhone Mail from checking for new mail automatically. Of course, you can also enable frequent — or instant — updates when they make sense.
Make iPhone Mail Check for New Mail Less Often (or Never)
To set how often iPhone Mail checks your accounts for new messages:
- Tap Settings on the iPhone's Home screen.
- Go to Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
- Select Fetch New Data.
- In iPhone Mail 2, go to Fetch New Data directly from Settings.
- Pick the desired mail checking interval for POP and IMAP accounts under Fetch.
- Choose Manual to disable automatic checking.
- Turn Push ON or OFF to enable or disable new messages in Exchange and iCloud accounts appearing in iPhone Mail the moment you receive them.
- To disable automatic mail checking for individual accounts or make push accounts update only periodically instead of instantly:
- Tap Advanced.
- Go to the desired account.
- Choose Manual for no automatic updates.
- Pick Fetch to have iPhone Mail check for new messages on the schedule set before.
- Select Push to have new messages pushed to Exchange accounts.
- Press the Home button.
(Updated September 2012)
