Embodiments of the present invention relate to the technical field of communications. Disclosed are a mail processing method and apparatus, which can solve the problem that power consumption is increased and standby time is reduced because an AP is frequently wakened up in a standby state to query and receive mails. The method in the present invention comprises: when it is detected that an intelligent terminal is in a first preset state, a modem sends a first query request command to a mail server; and after the modem receives a mail message sent to the modem after the mail server receives the mail in a first period of time, the modem stores the mail message to a buffer of the modem. The present invention is applicable to a modem.