Yahoo Mail is the biggest webmail provider in the world and its portal is one of the top web destinations. Yahoo is also the market leader in mobile webmail. Unfortuanately, I’ve been seeing some intermittent issues with Yahoo on mobile lately including:
- “Connection closed by remote server” messages
- An infinite login loop: After entering my ID and password and clicking the “Sign In” button, the login page reloads rather than taking me to my account. There’s no error message, the login form just reloads.
Both of these issues come and go, right now Yahoo is working for me but it’s been unavailable several times over the last few weeks.
There are also a couple of other issues that seem permanent and reproducible.
- Yahoo no longer keeps me logged in across sessions. I have to log in every time I visit.
- With some older phones that used to work with Yahoo, I now just get a message that says: “We’re sorry! Yahoo! Mobile, the starting point to the mobile Internet, does not support your device…” (image, top). This happens with some Nokia S40 phones and with older Motorola and Samsung devices
These problems seem to occur with the main Yahoo portal and mail URLs yahoo.com, mail.yahoo.com, the published Yahoo Mobile URL, m.yahoo.com and the country specific variants like in.m.yahoo.com or uk.mail.yahoo.com. With these URLs Yahoo does browser detection and redirects mobile browsers to either the flashy “New” tabbed Yahoo home page (1st image, above) or a lighter version (2nd image) for low end and older devices.
I discovered that there is an undocumented URL that goes directly to “Lite” version of Yahoo mobile. It’s m1.yahoo.com (or in.m1.yahoo.com, uk.m1.yahoo.com, etc). The lite variant seems much more reliable and I use it whenever I have problems with m.yahoo.com. The m1 version even works with devices that get the “unsupported…” message from m.yahoo.com. To skip the Yahoo portal and go straight to Yahoo Mobile Mail “Lite” use m1.yahoo.com/p/mail/ (or http://in.m1.yahoo.com/p/mail/, etc.)
There is a downside to Yahoo Lite. It’s lacking the homepage customisation features of the full version that let you add RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook. And with the Lite email module, HTML formatted emails appear as plain text without images and you can”t follow links in emails. But it does give you an option to at least read and reply to your email with an unsupported phone or when the better version of site is acting up.
NOT OPENING
i have serious issues with 1 of 2 yahoo ids and opera mini: it says wrong id,pwd. BUT WITH THE SAME ID AND PWD I USE POP3!! i cant log in at all! only with pc, not with phone.. but on the same phone, in opera mini: the other id and all ids of friends are working. please do something… maybe it has to do with the servers or with my account?!
I tried to access the regular mobile version of yahoo probably 20 times today (22.12.2010). It never happened before to my Omnia i900 using the Opera browser. Had some issues with the Internet Explorer but today my user and password were just ignored using both. I’ll try the lite version.
One thing I forgot to mention, I use the mobile mail mostly and saved a link in favorites directly to m.yahoo.com/p/mail/ instead of wading through the portal. I tried m1.yahoo.com/p/mail/ but the page is still acting up with the FOLDERS button partially displaying. This all started last night. This morning I was able to log in and out OK. Earlier problems with mobile mail was not being able to sign in.
Hi Mike,
We had some difficulty reproducing this issue, but I think we finally isolated it and have made an update. Thanks for highlighting this to us. Let me know if it is rendering correctly now.
Cheers,
Rahim
Director Product Management, Mobile Platforms
@funkstop
I’ve noticed recent problems with the FOLDERS button not completely displaying and trouble signing out. I have an HTC Touch Pro 2, with Opera browser. No problems unTIl yesterday when I could not sign out and FOLDER button problems. Someone at Yahoo has definately screwed something up. IF IT AIN’T BROKE, DON’T FIX IT.
Hi Dennis – We take usability issues very seriously at Yahoo! and we want our consumers to have the best possible experience on the their mobile phones. We’re aware of the issues you’ve addressed in the post, and are working to resolve them. Feel free to email me.
Chrs, Rahim
Director, Product Management, Mobile Platforms
Thanks for the comment I’m glad to hear that Yahoo is a aware of the issues and is working to resolve them.
Incidentally there is a new issue that just started a couple of days ago. The http://m1.yahoo.com URL that I mentioned as a workaround for users who were getting an unsupported device message at m.yahoo.com or who simply wanted a lighter, faster version of Yahoo news or mail on slow connections or metered data plans is now redirecting to m.yahoo.com. Perhaps you could look into restoring the previous behavior.
Hi.
Nothing new on the Lite version, “http://m1.yahoo.com” and its country links..?!?
Starting with April 12-th, I can’t get access on a “Nokia 3510i”. It says “Unrecognized file format”.
It was the only Mail and Messenger WAP service that worked very well.
m1.yahoo.com seems to be dead and gone.
The 3510i is a WML only phone. Yahoo, and most other big sites no longer support WML.
Take a look at http://wml.yeswap.com which is a directory of the remaining WML sites?
Yes, I was thinking maybe Mr. Rahim Adatia will read again here, and reconsider Supporting WML…
Thank You for the WML – WAP link of YESWAP.COM.
Also, I congratulate you, Sir BOURNIQUE, I consider your work regarding WAP sites, applications (the transcoder of YESWAP..?! ), etc. – most helpful, in these times when WML sites are rapidly disappearing.
:-)
I dont think that the `lite` links work either now as from today?
Mail “Lite” use m1.yahoo.com/p/mail/ (or http://in.m1.yahoo.com/p/mail/
These now load up the new version, which is a right pain when using WAP.
Any help to get them back be great.
You are right! Yahoo’s made their already poor legacy device and network support far worse. People like you on slow networks and metered data plans are forced to load heavier pages and users of unsupported devices like old Nokia S40 and wml-only phones can’t use Yahoo at all.
Thanks so much, Denni..Ive just tried your method (trick) n’ it’s workin’ gr8..I finally could login and read all my hundreds of unread msges in my Y! account..Thank u so much, mate..