"Unable to open connection to server" error when connecting to Exchange on Android 2.2

There seems to be a problem when using the default Android Email application to connect to an Exchange Server 2010 SP1.

When you go through the setup procedure and enter all necessary info to setup a new account on the phone, the setup will eventually fail throwing a "Setup could not finish" "Unable to open connection to server." message.

On the server side, the following log is generated:

 RequestBody :   
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>  
 <FolderSync xmlns="FolderHierarchy:">  
      <SyncKey>0</SyncKey>  
 </FolderSync>  
   
 AccessState :   
 Blocked  
   
 AccessStateReason :   
 Policy  
   
 ResponseHeader :   
 HTTP/1.1 449 Retry after sending a PROVISION command  
 MS-Server-ActiveSync: 14.1  

Google is aware of this (http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11177) and they calim to have fixed it but it is unknown when an update will be pushed.

The interesting thing though is that the Email application which is included with the 2.2 emulator seems to be working fine. So what we will do is extract the Email.apk from the emulator and install it on the phone.

Requirements: Rooted device, installed ADB and Android 2.2 Emulator.
Note: This will remove any improvements a ROM developer has included in Email.apk.
Disclaimer: I am not responsible if by doing this you damage your phone/data/life in an way. Backup your data first, preferably by making a Nandroid backup.


1. Make sure that any Android phones are unplugged from the computer.
2. Start the emulator using a 2.2 image.
3. After the emulator has finished loading, open a terminal and type:

 adb -e pull /system/app/Email.apk  

this will download the Email.apk from the emulator and place it in your current directory.
4. Close the emulator
5. Plug the problematic phone to your computer.
6. Make sure that USB debugging is enabled (Settings -> Applications -> Development -> USB debugging).
7. On the same terminal as before, enter the following:

 adb -d remount  
 adb -d pull /system/app/Email.apk Email.apk.bak  
 adb -d push Email.apk /system/app/
 adb -d remount  
 adb -d reboot  

This will temporarily remount the system partition as RW, make a backup copy of the original Email.apk to your hard drive (as Email.apk.bak), push the new APK to the device, remount the system partition as RO and finally reboot the device.

Thats it.

Now the phone should be able to communicate with the exchange server. If any problems persist, delete and recreate the account from the phone and remove the pairing from your exchange profile. Also, delete the Dalvik cache.

The original Email application will be in your home directory as "Email.apk.bak".