iPhone Push Notification Reliablity

Question

How reliable do you find push notification on the iPhone to be? Does it improve when moving from the sandbox to production server?

I am testing (with the sandbox of course) and have found that notifications are often delayed or not received at all. I am not talking about sending multiple messages and only the last one arriving, as the documentation indicates, but any notification never showing up.

Also, I noticed that if I send a notification with an alert, and then send one with just a badge number, that the second notification will close the alert even after it's already opened. Does this happen between apps as well? For instance, if I send an alert for my app, and then the Facebook app sends a badge, will the Facebook badge close my alert window?

Answer 1

I have no development experience with iPhone apps, but I do know that if you have an unofficial unlocked phone (by using pwnage tool/blackrain etc) then the PUSH notifications might NEVER go through. In fact, it does go through, but to another user's iPhone. This is because when an iPhone is unofficially network unlocked, it uses the Unique ID of some random individual's iPhone, which causes Push notifications to arrive on either phone (and yes, sometimes also on the unlocked phone it was intended for, but usually not)

Not sure if this is the case with you though, but AFAIK the service is pretty reliable if you follow Apple's rules. :)

Answer 2

The push notification seams better on production. You can always test it using ad-hoc distrbution which uses the production chanel to send the notifications.