Using Gmail on the iPhone

Using Gmail on the iPhone is a huge headache, especially if you receive a lot of email in your Gmail account. I was looking for a better way and found some great instructions on CatCubed for using Gmail through an IMAP server. Full instructions can be found on the CatCubed site, but here's a brief recap for my readers.

You'll need to start with three things:

1. An iPhone (...)
2. A Gmail account
3. An ISP or host that supports IMAP (I used 1and1, which hosts this page)

Steps:

1. Create an e-mail account on your ISP or host. You can give this account any name you want - it's not a publicly facing address. For example, mail@domain.com.
   
2. Set up a filter in Gmail to forward all mail to your mail@domain.com address, and auto-archive (skip the inbox)
3. Set up your iPhone to receive e-mail from the mail@domain.com IMAP server and send mail through smtp.gmail.com - your Gmail account will continue to be your outward facing e-mail address
4. Set up Mail (OS X) or the e-mail application of your choosing to do the same. This can be done in multiple locations. For example, I have Mail set up at home and Outlook set up at work.

What happens:

Gmail will continue to filter spam and store all messages, so there's a central archive, but when you delete an email in Outlook, Mail or on the iPhone, it's reflected in all places. IMAP servers store the status of the message on the server, POP stores it in the application that particular e-mail was downloaded to. This way, you don't need to archive messages in Gmail, on your iPhone and in any other application you may use to gather mail - everything is synced!

Again, more details can be found on the CatCubed site here.