Phone lost signal and all sent mail deleted

[Orcadian]

I have an oldish Samsung. It's pretty basic but it works fine. 

This happened around half an hour ago. I had just sent a msg to someone. Then the phone froze. After some seconds it said "Please wait". It had lost its signal and said "Searching...".

I waited and thought I'd check my Sent mail to see if the msg had in fact gone. But then I discovered that my Sent mail is empty (also my Drafts folder, where I had composed and saved a msg to someone else ). Despite several on-off's, it was around 5 minutes before my signal was restored - but the Sent and Draft messages have gone. Three questions: 1.  What on earth happened?  2. How do I stop it from happening again? 3. Can I get the sent messages back?  There was some important stuff there.

[BandOfBrothers]

1.  Could have been mast congestion.

1. 1. Could have been a software glitch in your phone. 

1. 2. Your mail app may need updating.

1. 3. Your mail servers may have glitched.

1. 4.  Your sim card could be glitching.

1.5. Older phones can become problematic due to ceasure of software updates.

2. Check your masts via Status-checker.

2.1. Check for any updates in your phone.

 2.2. Check if a software update is available.

2.3. Try using a different mail app

2.4.  You could have the sim replaced at store.

2.5. Consider upgrading to a more recent phone.

3. Vodafone do not retain the message content so maybe check in with the person you mailed to see if they recieved it.

3.1.  If you set your phone to back up then some back ups contain messages. Check those back ups. If not then the draft may have been lost as well as the sent message.

[AnnS]

Hi @Orcadian 

Your don't mention the model of phone you are using. This would have been a software issue with the phone causing it to freeze.  Try looking at your about phone software update and see if there is a software update ready to be downloaded. The next time you send a email try sending in two parts, this will give the phone memory less to cope with. Unfortunately, unless there is something on your gmail account, the messages may well be lost.

If it should happen again, you may need to ask Vodafone to take a look at the phone, it may need to be sent for repair but with you being out of warranty, this would be a chargeable repair.

[hrym]

I gave up on the Samsung email app when I had a Galaxy S2 (yes, that long ago!) because of the way it handled deletions.   You may well find that messages have been deleted on the phone, but may still be on the mail service.   Log in via a browser and see if they're in the Deleted folder.

My solution was to use the dedicated app for my service - does yours have one?

[Orcadian]

Thank you Hrym,  AnnS and BandOfBrothers. My phone is around 10 years old, though the sim card is only 2 years old. I doubt the phone still gets software updates (certainly it doesn't report any) but if that was it, then it's too late. The phone is not connected to my email account. I am about to log in to my online Vodafone account to see if there's anything there.  Thanks again!