Official Gmail push comes to iPhone, Windows Mobile

Updated 5:45 p.m. PDT with more details about e-mail push.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

Some of you who have been restlessly awaiting the arrival of Google's official Gmail push solution for mobile phones can relax now. On Tuesday, Google expanded the over-the-air syncing capabilities in its Google Sync service to include Google's e-mail--but only for the iPhone and iPod Touch (version 3.0), and for Windows Mobile phones.

Google Sync began as a beta service to sync Google calendar items and contacts to iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Symbian Series 60 phones. Owners of iPhones, iPod Touches, and Windows Mobile phones can now set it up to include Gmail messages as well.

The phones will receive Google Sync messages through their native e-mail, calendar, and address book apps. Depending on your settings, your phone could vibrate and/or chime to let you know that a new message has come in. Note that Google Sync will not push visual notification boxes to iPhone and iPod Touch interfaces. For that, you'll need third party apps like GPush for iPhone. Instead, it pushes e-mail from the server to the phone, rather than pulls in a list of e-mail messages, a request that the phone's e-mail client makes of the server. Push e-mail is often preferred over "pulled" e-mail for its real-time updates and its lower toll on battery life.

BlackBerry and Nokia Symbian Series 60 users won't have access to pushed Gmail yet, but they can still sync calendar and contact events to the phone's built-in address book and calendar.

To get started, visit m.google.com/sync from your desktop or mobile browser. The step-by-step setup process is best navigated from your computer, and will require you to ultimately configure your phone to sync over the Microsoft Exchange Server.

Related story: Gmail push on iPhone? Meet GPush

[ramblinknight]

Apparently a lot of people are trying this out or Google has an unexpected load. I can't access m.google.com/sync on my iPhone and am getting a Server Error. We'll see if this frees up soon. Let me know if you get through.

[sirtoast]

Hope they start looking at integrating Tasks from the Google Calendar now, for similar syncing

[jfacade]

Wait, Blackberries already recieve push email from gmail via the BIS, why would i need to use sync for that?

[jaguar717]

The Palm Pre also receives push email from all 4 of my accounts (gmail, yahoo, school, work) via ULTIMATE DOMINATION.

[strykernyc]

I have a Blackberry and I don't have BIS so Gmail push is perfect and is free. BIS they want too much $$.

[Regulator7]

It's about frickin' time.

However, nice to see that all of us iPhone + Gmail users have now crashed their server. Very funny....

[wclanders]

Its too bad you can only have one exchange account active at a time on the iphone. I have my work setup as exchange so I still have to use IMAP for google. :(

[vonhinten84]

@ wclanders: I agree, more than one exchange account should be permitted. I unfortunatly cannot use google sync as my school email takes that position which also leaves me with IMAP delivery of gmail...

[pjdagost]

Well, the vast majority of iPhone users already have an exchange account set-up for their work email. Since you can only have one exchange account on an iPhone, most users are out of luck for this workaround for gmail.

[Vegaman_Dan]

BINGO. It's not very well known, but yeah, only one Exchange account at a time. That hampers me as I have two now and would like to add a third. I can do this on Windows Mobile and Palm devices already without limit. I'm not sure what sort of adapation the iPhone OS has set up that has resulted in a limit of only one Exchange account.

This Gmail feature won't be one I'll be using. :/

[jaguar717]

I highly doubt the "vast majority" do considering that the majority of iphone users don't even have real jobs; they're high school and college kids.

Of the ones who are adults, I'm sure a respectable portion have work email, but there's no way the "vast majority" of even that subset have exchange accounts set up.

[strykernyc]

yup mostly kids and mostly girls.

[Vegaman_Dan]

"I highly doubt the "vast majority" do considering that the majority of iphone users don't even have real jobs; they're high school and college kids."

I question this since the iPhone costs $80 / month minimum to own and that's a high bill for a person without a job.

[jaguar717]

You'd think so, but not these days.

The high school and college kids just have Daddy pick up the check.

[fireski]

Since the iPhone only allows one exchange account, this has absolutely no use for people that also use their iPhones for work.

[xxdesmusxx]

it's going horribly slow right now. In a lot of cases new emails were never making it to my iPhone. I'll go back to NuevaSync for the time being until Google can get its act together on this.

[psychosouljunkie]

Hopefully I'll be able to get my mail soon.

[JoshT1983]

Im unable to get my iphone connected to the mail account, my contacts synced up right away but am unable to get the calendar nor the email to work right

[camckay]

Interesting that they say this works on Win Mobile and iPhone, but not Nokia S60 devices. Seems kind of silly, since all three devices use Active Sync. How do they tell their server to only allow certain devices? So just on a whim, I went into the settings on my Nokia E71, enabled mail synchronization, and what do you know, it worked like a charm. So if any of the readers here are disgruntled Nokia users, angry that once again we are being left out in the cold, cheer up! It works for us, too!

[rohitrs16]

Here's a complete tutorial on how to setup push gmail on your iPhone! http://retwt.me/cvBq

[eagleyesmith]

Just as other commenters have said, if you already have an exchange account setup you can't have multiple exchange accounts which truly does suck. I use my exchange account for school. I would love to have push email for Gmail, and I don't want to download GPush for iPhone because I don't want to open up multiple apps just to check my email. Hope Apple fixes this in iPhone 4.0 OS.

[Vegaman_Dan]

It's a limitation in the iPhone OS. Since other devices can have multiple Exchange account access, it may be that Apple has intentionaly limited it, or the OS itself simply isn't set up for multiple accounts. There's also a possibility there is a licensing issue- perhaps Apple has to pay an extra fee to Microsoft for each account access ability?

[eagleyesmith]

@ Vegaman_Dan: I'm pretty sure that it's just a Software Limitation in the iPhone OS. I would guess the reasoning behind it would be that Apple must assume that people only have one Exchange account, and that's just work. In theory I can understand it, but as always, demand, time, and people change. So hopefully either Apple builds support for more than one Exchange Account in iPhone 4.0 OS. Or the other mail clients build Push Support for their Emails because you can get Pushed email with Yahoo!Mail too. I believe that it's just Gmail, AIM, Hotmail, etc, that don't have Push Support. I would doubt that it has anything to do w/ Apple paying and extra fee to Microsoft for each account to access the Exchange Server's. I honestly don't know if they pay a fee at all. I'm just happy that I have Push Email period.

I only get 1 month worth of emails synced to my iPhone, even though I selected "No Limit" under "Mail Days to Sync". If anyone has an answer, please share

[northernnorthern]

I get same, only syncs one month back even though I set "No limit". Anyone know the answer?

[nefariousrich]

I've had push Gmail on my BlackBerry for two years since I purchased it. Normally I receive it on my device before I even see it on the computer. I don't know what she means when she says BlackBerry doesn't have push.

[Union_Station_Jon]

What if I already have a Microsoft exchange account for my work e-mail?
iphone says it can only have one of these at a time...

[soccerkrzy]

It means you're screwed...just like me, and probably most iPhone users...

[Vegaman_Dan]

You can still probably access your other Exchange account if that email has Outlook Web Access available. Not as convenient by far, but it's something. Its' the only workaround I have found fo my own multiple Exchange accounts issue.