Note: The information here is not new. However, from reading forums, etc., it seems as though that a lot of people still aren’t informed as to the best way to utilize Gmail/gCal with the iPhone.
If you don’t use Exchange with your iPhone and want cloud-based email and calendaring, Apple’s solution is MobileMe. Known startup problems notwithstanding, there’s nothing really wrong with MobileMe if you don’t mind paying $100/year. However, if all you need out of MobileMe are email and calendar syncing between your desktop, iPhone, and a web client, then Gmail and gCal already have it covered.
Before going any further, it should be noted that Gmail cannot be “pushed” to the iPhone as of this writing without a less than elegant solution. However, before you dismiss the rest of this article, ask yourself – do I really need push email? Is a maximum of 15 minutes too much time to wait for new mail? Am I really that lonely? I guess if you want to avoid SMS due to the costs and use email in it’s place with other “pushers”, then maybe you do need push. Otherwise, read on.
Setting up a Gmail account on the iPhone:
Under Settings | Mail, Contacts, Calendars, tap on Add Account….
And there it is, and nice big Gmail logo ready to help you set up your Gmail account.
Stop! Don’t tap it!
Note: In order to get the most out of Gmail, you want to set up your account to use IMAP so your mail is maintained via the “cloud”. This will keep your mail synced automatically between your phone, the Gmail web application, and your desktop mail client of choice (Mail.app, Outlook, etc.). For instance, emails shown as ‘read’ on your phone will instantly (well, almost) show up as ‘read’ in your email client as well. Better yet, emails deleted in one environment will be deleted in all environments. You get the picture.
The default setup for Gmail on the iPhone will use POP instead of IMAP. So instead, choose Other.
The settings needed for the account can be found on this Google help page: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=77702&topic=12814
If you have other email accounts you want to receive email from on your phone and you’re like me and want only one Inbox (hey Apple, give us a unified inbox, please!), you can log in to your Gmail account via a browser and ask Gmail to check your other email account(s) via POP. Gmail will periodically check the additional account(s) and add any received emails to your Gmail inbox. You can even set your reply-to email to your POP account’s address.
This works fine, but I’ve settled on a solution I like even better – Google Apps.
With Google Apps, it’s possible to use Google to maintain your own domain’s email (jdoe@mydomain.com), set up and maintain additional email accounts, share calendars, etc.
I’ve set up my primary domain for email to point to Gmail, and in order to maintain a single inbox, I’m having my Google Apps email check my @gmail.com account via POP.
If you can wait up to 15 minutes to get you email, I think the Gmail/IMAP/iPhone setup is a good solution for both personal and small business use.
In Part 2 of this discussion, I’ll talk about synchronizing your Google Calendar with your iPhone (and iCal) via the cloud.
