Google adds push GMail to iPhone via Exchange Activesync

[Terpfen]

From Engadget:

Google Sync's pretty awesome as it is, but it's had one glaring flaw in its implementation: no support for Gmail, just Calendar and Contacts, which means you aren't able to get true push email delivered. Well, they've gone ahead and completed the holy Google trinity today with the introduction of Gmail support into the Exchange ActiveSync mix, so any phone with Exchange support should theoretically be able to get in on the action. We say "theoretically" because they're only quoting support for the iPhone and Windows Mobile at this point, but it seems like anything that can speak the EAS protocol should be able to make this happen. Let us know your trials, tribulations, and successes getting this set up in comments, won't you?

About damn time, I say. Also included is Google Contacts and Google Calendars. Google is using Microsoft Exchange to get all this set up. Instructions are here.

 

[phide]

Beautiful. This beats the shit out of forwarding mail from my hosted Gmail accounts to a Yahoo! account.

 

[Rombus]

Woot! Now i only wish i could setup 2 Exchange active syncs on my iPhone. I have a Gmail account and i also have google hosed apps for my personal site where my calender is synced though.

 

[Terpfen]

Woot! Now i only wish i could setup 2 Exchange active syncs on my iPhone. I have a Gmail account and i also have google hosed apps for my personal site where my calender is synced though.

Since Google uses EAS to hook into Google Sync, you can just set up the one Exchange account and have it sync your GMail, Google Calendars, and Google Contacts. Just follow the setup instructions and enable or disable which syncing feature you want.

 

[phide]

Are you guys finding that it takes an incredibly long time to connect to Google's servers? I'm finding that I'm having to wait up to two minutes for Mail to officially connect, and even then there's still a good deal of activity as indicated by the activity indicator on the top bar. There are also some curious discrepancies between what's in my inbox currently and what the phone synced (missing e-mails), for whatever reason.

 

[tscolin]

Are you guys finding that it takes an incredibly long time to connect to Google's servers?

It does take a very long time, seems to be bandwidth intensive too. I can watch my battery gauge fall like a sand timer when it checks for mail or downloads the body of the message. I will be staying with standard non-push gmail until this improves.

 

[Terpfen]

Are you guys finding that it takes an incredibly long time to connect to Google's servers? I'm finding that I'm having to wait up to two minutes for Mail to officially connect, and even then there's still a good deal of activity as indicated by the activity indicator on the top bar. There are also some curious discrepancies between what's in my inbox currently and what the phone synced (missing e-mails), for whatever reason.

I would imagine that the service is overloaded as people sign up for the first time. Should go away as the week progresses.

 

[AthlonXP]

What sucks is that if you have an exchange account for work, this option will still not work for you as the phone can only support one exchange account.

 

[Rombus]

Since Google uses EAS to hook into Google Sync, you can just set up the one Exchange account and have it sync your GMail, Google Calendars, and Google Contacts. Just follow the setup instructions and enable or disable which syncing feature you want.

Google Sync works great my Google apps hosted services (Mail, Calender and Contacts) on my personal site. I just want to be able to add a second exchange account on my iPhone for my @gmail.com address. Short forwarding the email, my @gmail.com account still is not push enabled.

 

[Terpfen]

Short forwarding the email, my @gmail.com account still is not push enabled.

It doesn't look as if standard GMail accounts in the iPhone's Mail app will be push-enabled anytime soon. This is pretty much the only way to get push GMail on the iPhone, unless you forward your GMail to another account as you said.

Maybe Apple can get battery life issues sorted out and allow for more than one Exchange account on the iPhone at some future date. Wouldn't count on it though.

 

[pyles]

I use GPush, its just an app to do that and push the email thru push notification, I think that will require less battery, no? I might just stick with that for now.

 

[Terpfen]

I use GPush, its just an app to do that and push the email thru push notification, I think that will require less battery, no? I might just stick with that for now.

IIRC, GPush maintains a constant connection to Google and Apple's notification servers. Battery life toll is probably about the same.

I switched over to the Google Sync method just to keep everything integrated into the iPhone's Mail app.