How to set up Gmail push on your iPhone

Today, Google announced that Google Sync has added support for Gmail, meaning that if you have a Gmail account, you can now get your mail pushed to your iPhone. And the two best things are that it’s free and easy.

All you need to begin with is an iPhone (with iPhone OS 3.0+) and a Gmail account. Basically, all you’re going to do is add a new email account in Settings with Microsoft Exchange. Okay, follow along now.

1. Open up Settings on your iPhone. Scroll down to Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
2. Touch “Add Account…” Select Microsoft Exchange.
3. Enter in your full email address into the email box (this includes “@gmail.com”).
4. Leave Domain blank.
5. Enter your Username and Password as you normally would. Touch next in the top right corner.
6. Your iPhone may scream something like “Unable to verify certificate” at you. If it does, just tap Accept.
7. An additional field is available, Server. In the Server field enter m.google.com. Touch Next one more time.
8. Now you can choose what you’d like to sync to your iPhone. Your choices include Mail, Contacts and Calendar entries, but you already knew that.
9. If you’ve chosen to sync Contacts or Calendars, it will ask if you’d like to delete contacts on your iPhone that aren’t in your Gmail account. Unless you are very confident in your Gmail contacts collection, I’d advise you to select Keep on my iPhone.
10. And you’re done. That was easy right?

If you’re confused, Google has very good graphic tutorial here.

Okay, things to note. Google’s servers are currently being nailed, so I wouldn’t really expect Gmail push to work 100% for a day or so (at least). Also, even though this is push, that doesn’t mean you’ll be notified the instant your Gmail account receives a message. It does mean that it should notify you a whole lot faster than a standard IMAP connection. Alternatively, you could try out one of the push notification apps on the App Store. You might also do this if you have more than one MS Exchange account, since the iPhone only allows for one at a time. And chances are if you have another MS Exchange account, it’s likely more important than your Gmail account, but that’s just a guess on my part.