Google Sync Now Does Gmail Push for iPhone, for Free
Earlier this year, we launched Google Sync which allows you to synchronize your Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar with your iPhone, Windows Mobile, and S60 devices. Today, we’re adding Gmail support to Google Sync for iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows Mobile devices.
That ‘s straight from the Google Mobile Blog, and it ‘s very good news for iPhone owners who want Gmail push “ as it ‘s an effective, and free, solution coming straight from Google themselves.
I ‘ve been using Google Sync for Contacts and Calendars ever since it launched “ and it has always worked flawlessly and given me two less things to worry about whenever I restore my iPhone. The new Gmail push seems to be working quite well also “ in my quick testing of it this morning.
This may be bad news for apps like PushGmail “ which Thomas posted about earlier today “ and other similar third party apps. Unless you want some of their extra bells and whistles (choosing notification tones, popup alerts and such-like), it ‘s going to be hard to argue with a free and easy solution via Google Sync.
The only other big reason this may not work for some folks is that it requires that you setup Google Sync as an MS Exchange account on the iPhone, and some of you may have already maxed out on Exchange account setup on the iPhone with your corporate setup.
Since I already had Google Sync setup on my iPhone, it took about two seconds to just toggle Mail On within the Settings app once I heard about Gmail push going live. This is really not a feature that I ‘ve needed or wanted up to now, so I ‘m just getting to know the settings available and so forth.
As I said though, push instantly started working when I toggled it on, and is continuing to work just fine. I may have just not found where to set these things as yet “ but thus far I don ‘t see a way to get a popup alert on new mails. It just seems to do a sound alert and an app icon badge update by default.
It also does not seem lightning fast on push as yet “ it ‘s reasonable, but certainly not instant, and again I ‘m not clear on where to go to set it ‘s polling interval to be more constant.
If you need to setup Google Sync on your iPhone “ for push of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar “ Google has a great how-to post that walks you through it HERE.
So all of a sudden we have a number of choices for Gmail push. It ‘s like that old saying about waiting for a bus: for ages there are none, and then three come along at once. Do you want / need Gmail push? If so, which is looking like your favorite solution?
I spotted the news about Gmail push via Google Sync today via my good friend @KRAPPS on Twitter. Thanks mate. 
Shame that I can't have this for home mail / calendar and also MS Exchange for my work stuff
I am up in arms that we can only have one exchange account. Come on, Apple!
Isn't this more of a Microsoft / Exchange limitation? I don't think you can even have multiple Exchange accounts within Outlook on the desktop, if I remember right.
No, you can. I'm pretty sure. I know that I had 2 on my BB at least…
I'm not sure that gmail push notifications are good for my mental health, given the amount of email I get! Though then again I do check it about every minute or so anyway
LOL – I always feel like I'm a Scrooge-type character when it comes to push, because I really don't want that much of it. As you say, I spend too much time already checking email.
gpush is still better, because it gives you a badge notification and a unique sound.
Google Sync is updating the mail app badge – just no popup alert.
Wow Patrick, your good! I was on the site earlier and saw the post u did on pushgmail. I stumbled across the info about push by Google themselves, and I was just coming here to let u know about it, and voilà, u already had a post about it! I mean, I had already copied the link to my clipboard and everything! Way to be on it!
So I've always used the exchange mail setup to sync my contacts and calenders with gmail, so like u all I had to do was click one toggle. Now is it just me, or did your mailbox take quite a while to update? By and large, even if their push notifications aren't instant, I'll probably stick with that and get rid of Gpush. Anyway to have one less app to lug around!
By the way, say I run into this situation where I may want to let u know some information that I've come across, what is your desired procedure fo that? Would u like me to email u(I have it already)?
Thanks – but it's not all me of course. Thomas did the PushGmail post earlier, and I only found out about the Google Sync Gmail push via a helpful prod from @krapps about it.
I am a very, very happy camper whenever you want to share tips / info with us. Sending by email is fine. That and Twitter are constants for me – so they're good ways to get me usually. I have various IM accounts I look at to varying degrees as well – let me know by email if you want those and I'll share them.
That sounds great. I'll be using email if I need to give u a shout about something, because I haven't made the jump to Twitter. I'm kinda refusing to. I already spend enuff time on the pc and iPhone as is, and I feel Twitter would be a somewhat big distraction for me. Maybe one day I'll change my mind. Just a personal decision. My wife sure loves it though!
Email sounds good to me. I like Twitter a lot, but I know plenty of folks who don't and it can be a distraction for sure. My wife thinks it's silly
@ Shobizz3000, same here…. Facebook takes up too much of my time already. I don't think my fiance will marry me if I joined Twitter. LOL Patrick I am going to say it again….. I would love for you guys to bring the Podcast back. I was watching one last week on another site & they use Ustream to do it LIVE on the site. There is also a cool section for us to chat while you guys do the podcast. Sorry had to say it again
Hey Frank – on the podcast subject, I can tell you we've been thinking / talking about that. Stay tuned and all that jazz
AWESOME!!! Thanks Patrick, I won't bother you again about it…. LOL
No worries – those Qs are never a bother.
Patrick, Good post! Just a few notes to some of your points.
There is no option to adjust the polling interval, since that's not how the ActiveSync technology works. With ActiveSync (which is what Exchange and now Google Push use), the iPhone doesn't even poll the server. When a new message is received in your inbox, the server sends a signal (much like Apple's push server) to the mail app signaling it to perform a send/receive. This way the iPhone is only checking for mail when there's actually a new message, and not wasting power when there's nothing for it to do.
Google licensed the activesync technology from Microsoft, so basically their piping your Gmail account through Exchange. While I'm sure they're not running a big Exchange farm on the back-end, the front-end connectivity is the same.
Also, just like the standard POP/IMAP accounts, the Exchange account will update the Mail icon badge and play a sound alert, but there is no pop up alert for new messages. This is probably the only real driver now towards having a third-party Gmail push app installed. That and customizable sounds.
Unfortunately for me, I'm unable to take advantage of Google Push since I have my company's Exchange account set up in its place. However, since I finally did decide to renew my MobileMe account, I just use that for contacts/calendar syncing since you can use that in combination with Exchange and maintain separate Contacts and Calendars, and then they sync to Google through iCal and Address Book on my Mac.
Hey Josh – thanks for the feedback. I was pretty sure that was the case on the lack of options to adjust push intervals. It's odd though – because back in Windows Mobile days I've used Excahnge ActiveSync (and set it up for clients) and I'm pretty sure I recall being able to use push and to still set how often you wanted to be checking for new mail, form down at 1 minute and 5-minute intervals on upwards. Either I'm not recalling it right, or MS is saving a little Excahnge configuring goodness for just MS powered devices.
Oh, and I ended up renewing MobileMe in the end as well
I have been having issues w/ the body of my emails. It seems like every other message takes forever to load up. Albeit I'm on EDGE (Jailbroken Tmob 1g iPhone), emails that were on Fetch seemed to download a lot faster.
I think Google's servers have just been bombarded. I'd give it a day or two, and it will most likely speed up.
Awesome! I never got GPush to work, so this is definitely good news to me.