How to setup email on the iPhone - Access Gmail on iPhone

Posted on December 22, 2007 at 7:01 am

Make sure to read other posts from the Apple iPhone & iPod Tips series!

  1. How to add more sources to iPhone and iPod Touch installer apps
  2. How to add videos, songs, and photos to an iPod
  3. How to setup email on the iPhone - Access Gmail on iPhone
  4. Get the iPhone interface on your BlackBerry using bPhone
  5. Five cool games you can play on your Apple iPhone

Since everybody’s got an iPhone now, I’ve been asked by a couple of people on how they can setup their iPhones so that they can read their emails from Gmail and Hotmail quickly, easily, and without having to go through the tiny Internet browser (Safari). The cool thing about the iPhone is that you can use it’s built-in Mail feature to access your Gmail email via IMAP!

Recently Google announced that Gmail would be supporting the IMAP interface, which means Gmail can be accessed from thousands of devices such as mobile phones, PDA’s, etc instead of just through POP3 (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc). I’ll write out the steps you have to perform to access Gmail on your iPhone using both IMAP and POP3.

Access Gmail on iPhone via IMAP

First, on the iPhone interface, tap the Settings button from the Home screen.

iphone

Then click on Mail, and click on Add Account under the Accounts section. Choose Other and then choose IMAP.

You may see when you click on Mail that there are chooses already there, one of which is Gmail! So why not simply choose that? You can do it that way and this method is how you would set it up using POP. Using IMAP though, you will get the messages in a different format that is more readable on the iPhone.

If you do it the normal way (POP) by clicking on GMail from the Mail section, your email messages when viewed on the iPhone will look like this:

iphone email[6]

As you can see, everything is pretty tiny still because it includes all of ads on the right side, etc. It’s basically like reading the email by going to Safari and logging to Gmail from there. If you want the emails to look nicer when viewed on the iPhone, access it using IMAP the way I’m describing.

iphone imap

Enter your name under Name, the full Gmail address, and a description for the account. For Incoming Mail Server, go ahead and type in imap.gmail.com and your username@gmail.com for User Name and your password. For SMTP Outgoing mail server, enter smtp.gmail.com and type in the same username and password information there also.

Next click on the Advanced button and select On the Server | Gmail/Drafts, Deleted Messages under Sent Mailbox, and Gmail/Trash under Deleted Mailbox. Also make sure Incoming Uses SSL is ON and Outgoing Uses SSL is On. Finally, check Password under Authentication and click Save.

To access Gmail on the iPhone using POP, just click on Gmail after you click on Mail from the home menu. Enter in the login information and you’ll be done! But again, it’s better to setup Gmail on the iPhone using IMAP because it also supports features like threads and can be viewed much better.

Any questions, post a comment and I’ll see if I can help! Enjoy!

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4 Responses to “How to setup email on the iPhone - Access Gmail on iPhone”

  1. Helen Mul said on : January 1st, 2008 at 9:40 am

    Hey,
    it says the advanced button, but where it this button?
    cheers


  2. richie rusky said on : January 30th, 2008 at 2:00 am

    how do i setup my mail feature with yahoo mail?


  3. Winnie said on : February 17th, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    i tried to setup my hotmail account but connot!! any tips??


  4. helene brotman said on : March 2nd, 2008 at 2:44 pm

    I have same question as helen mul….
    insrtuctions say “click on the advanced button” Where is it?


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