End of push Gmail on iOS

From someone who thought not having this service from Google would be awful I have to say it actually isn't that bad.

I switched over from one Exchange-configured Gmail account on my iPhone to using the Gmail app, and using CalDAV and CardDAV for calendars and contacts respectively.

Lame, you might say. You don't get mail/calendar/contact data immediately pushed anymore! The way you have it set up isn't as good as Exchange.

YMMV of course but I would like to inform you that I don't miss Exchange.

Gmail pushes instantly.

Who needs pushed contacts? I didn't and the refresh button located in Phone.app / Contacts.app performed the task perfectly when it was actually necessary.

And calendars. I thought I would die without immediate calendar pushing as I rely on it for my job. Turns out Gmail push notifications for invites worked essentially the same way, giving me the option to accept the invitations right from within that app. And the next time I open my Calendar.app it is automatically refreshed to show me my current calendar entries, with a manual refresh button located in the top left "Calendars" menu.

And as far as using the default Mail.app for sending mail: just set it up your Gmail account in it, but set it to use Manual Fetch instead of push or timed fetch. Basically, set up Mail.app to act as a "send only account" and nothing more.

Plus, saved battery.

No Exchange means no exchange data connection, refreshed constantly when switching towers, 4G/LTE, or low signal. Essentially, no Exchange means better battery life, with comparable features that don't feel at all like the step down like I had been anticipating.

I am looking forward to whether or not Google will offer an official Google Calendar app though now that they've axed EAS, even though the default Calendar performs admirably even without Exchange.

The gmail app has push. No need to switch email providers. It is a small hassle, but at least you can still have instant notifications.

I finally turned off my exchange push contacts, calendar entries.

I went ahead and enabled all my contacts & calendar entries on icloud. I believe it is the cheapest way to go for now because if anything happens to my iPhone, I'll still be able to restore all my contacts & calendar entries. And I'll still leave gmail email active for now.

@chestvrg:

You don't have to use iCloud. You can still store your contacts and calendars within Gmail, and access them the same way you always have. Just go to Settings>Mail>Add Account>Other>CalDAV for your Calendar and CardDAV for your contacts. They won't push automatically of course because they're not Exchange, but they refresh easily enough within each app...

Personally I wouldn't want to start using iCloud because I think Google's services are better. Not to mention having everything in one place is better than having it in two.

Screw Google. They abandoned their users.

I don't use Google for my contacts but I do use it for calendar and mail. I will just switch over to my @me.com account for email and then transfer my calendars over to iCloud too.

jqc said:

so i switched over to imap on the mail app with manual fetch, and am using the gmail app for push notification...Granted its on the weekend and I only get a fraction of emails on the weekend vs. the work week, but im at 1 day 9 hours of standby and 5 hrs 20 minutes of usage, and I have 19% left. This is insane, i never went a weekend day without having to charge by days end, this could be the way to go for me (contacts and cal has always been through iCal).

Click to expand...

I use the also gmail app for push. I am still using active sync for calendars and contacts. I am on a business account, so I don't foresee a problem with keeping this way. I use the mail.app for my personal yahoo email and that is set to push. I get great battery life as well on my iPhone 5.

I was still able to setup the account on a new iPhone using Exchange method and it worked ... Weird didn't see any news about extending service to iOS users ...only MS ones ... I do have a paid storage account with Google though ... Not sure if they targeted only totally free users or what

lucastatic said:

@chestvrg:

You don't have to use iCloud. You can still store your contacts and calendars within Gmail, and access them the same way you always have. Just go to Settings>Mail>Add Account>Other>CalDAV for your Calendar and CardDAV for your contacts. They won't push automatically of course because they're not Exchange, but they refresh easily enough within each app...

Personally I wouldn't want to start using iCloud because I think Google's services are better. Not to mention having everything in one place is better than having it in two.

Click to expand...

Thank you & the worse is that I don't have a computer, my computer broke.

lucastatic said:

Personally I wouldn't want to start using iCloud because I think Google's services are better. Not to mention having everything in one place is better than having it in two.

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Yeah, since my gmail address is my main personal address, it's easier for me to use Google contacts as well. It's easier to add new contacts since a lot of them come through email first.

I don't get it. I'm still getting push email on my iPhone and iPad. Also, when I read te message on one device, it's marked as read on the other.

In other words, no difference.

Has anyone who uses Google Sync on free accounts jailbreak their iPhones? I want to make sure that jailbreaking won't affect my current google sync setup.

chestvrg said:

I feel bad too. I have all my contacts, calendar entries on google. Not to mention google drive (has saved my beef in times). I don't know what to do my self, if to just get an android device or find lternatives.

Currently my gmail is set up as EAS (exchange active sun), and the only way I can see all my contact and calendar entries is via active sync. If God forbids and something happens to my iPhone, I'll be SOL.

In the mean time I will begin migrating all my calendar entries to icloud until I'm able to find an alternate solution.

Click to expand...

You can always export all your Google calendars and contacts as a single file and then import into the Mac so that it will be sync'ed to iCloud. I'm not sure if there is a way to do so by iOS devices only.

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dinggus said:

I never noticed the difference. So, I'm assuming Google is trying to make iPhone users switch to Android?

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They want you to use their Gmail app.

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Wicked1 said:

Whne you look at the big picture it seems that Android and Apple are starting to build Silos around them, excluding things they allowed in the past, which means if they make it painful to share services users will either go all iOS or go all Android. With them not even supporting Microsoft, just shows that Android does not want to participate with MS, and I hope MS does the same, although this is not good for MS who is trying to attract customers to their platform.

I think eventually Apple will not support Android stuff inside iOS, but instead make you use apps to utilize Google account stuff like, email, cal and contacts as well as other services, and I see Google doing the same.

The big question is how will BB and MS survive since their eco system is not as strong as Apple or Google

Click to expand...

Except that there are a lot of Google apps on the App Store, including Google Maps! One thing people ignored is that Google is playing even harder on Microsoft. Exchange is a Microsoft technology. Also Google is not developing any app for Windows Phone, including YouTube.

haruhiko said:

You can always export all your Google calendars and contacts as a single file and then import into the Mac so that it will be sync'ed to iCloud. I'm not sure if there is a way to do so by iOS devices only.

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They want you to use their Gmail app.

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Except that there are a lot of Google apps on the App Store, including Google Maps! One thing people ignored is that Google is playing even harder on Microsoft. Exchange is a Microsoft technology. Also Google is not developing any app for Windows Phone, including YouTube.

Click to expand...

And yet they extended sync support for Windows Phone for another 6 months.

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silver8ack said:

I don't get it. I'm still getting push email on my iPhone and iPad. Also, when I read te message on one device, it's marked as read on the other.

In other words, no difference.

Click to expand...

If you already had sync set up before then nothing was supposed to change for you anyway.

If you already had sync set up before then nothing was supposed to change for you anyway.

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that's good to know. But what if I decide to restore to factory settings... Am I SOL? Or do they say, hey this guy was ActiveSync before, he cool?

silver8ack said:

that's good to know. But what if I decide to restore to factory settings... Am I SOL? Or do they say, hey this guy was ActiveSync before, he cool?

Click to expand...

This is exactly what I'm trying to figure out! I'm scared that if I do anything (restoring the iPhone, jailbreaking, etc) I'll lose my ActiveSync setup. Google says no new activations of ActiveSync, but current devices will stay syncing. *Technically*, restoring doesn't alter the device identifiers right? Ahhhh the paranoia

chrtran said:

This is exactly what I'm trying to figure out! I'm scared that if I do anything (restoring the iPhone, jailbreaking, etc) I'll lose my ActiveSync setup. Google says no new activations of ActiveSync, but current devices will be activated. *Technically*, restoring doesn't alter the device identifiers right? Ahhhh the paranoia

Click to expand...

I guess it's really irrelevant for me because I will most likely be upgrading my phone soon. If its per device, rather than per account, I'm screwed anyway.

I do use the Gmail app sometimes, but i CANNOT STAND how it notifies you that you have an email but doesn't download any of them until you open the app and have to stare at it for several seconds.(AT&T data connection is horrendous in the Philly metro area even with 5 bars)

silver8ack said:

I guess it's really irrelevant for me because I will most likely be upgrading my phone soon. If its per device, rather than per account, I'm screwed anyway.

I do use the Gmail app sometimes, but i CANNOT STAND how it notifies you that you have an email but doesn't download any of them until you open the app and have to stare at it for several seconds.(AT&T data connection is horrendous in the Philly metro area even with 5 bars)

Click to expand...

I will likely pay to upgrade my account to a paid Gmail/apps account to get Active Sync back when I need to upgrade/replace one of my iOS devices.

The stupid wifi firewall at work blocks ALL POP and IMAP email ports. The ONLY email protocol that passes is MS Exchange/ActiveSync... which is why I switched to Gmail in the first place. Since I don't want to change my personal email yet again, I'll pay to keep ActiveSync working.

silver8ack said:

that's good to know. But what if I decide to restore to factory settings... Am I SOL? Or do they say, hey this guy was ActiveSync before, he cool?

Click to expand...

As mentioned before in the thread, you should be fine. In fact, it's looking like even those with new devices can still get this working for the time being (although that part of it can and probably will change sometime soon, unless this is all truly by account and not really by device).

xraydoc said:

I will likely pay to upgrade my account to a paid Gmail/apps account to get Active Sync back when I need to upgrade/replace one of my iOS devices.

The stupid wifi firewall at work blocks ALL POP and IMAP email ports. The ONLY email protocol that passes is MS Exchange/ActiveSync... which is why I switched to Gmail in the first place. Since I don't want to change my personal email yet again, I'll pay to keep ActiveSync working.

Click to expand...

You can switch to Outlook.com/Hotmail. They support active sync.

whsbuss said:

You can switch to Outlook.com/Hotmail. They support active sync.

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True, but I don't want to have to direct people to (yet another) email address.

Hi there,

I've been a Blackberry user for years and I'm on the verge of switching to an iphone potentially. The new BB seems like a fail and I'm not sure if my provider will support the Q10. So I might as well switch to the iphone. This topic here is one of my bigger concerns with this.

One of the great things about BB has always been their push mail service and the ability to easily separate work and personal mails. Push mail is a must. For work that would come from an Exchange server. That should be ok.

My personal mails come from a small provider and get forwarded instantly to my BB email and a split second later the phone buzzes. I was aware that Google mail can be a workaround to achieve the same thing. Looks like that's going away. Google already eliminated their calendar support for us BB users. So I don't want to rely on them any longer. Their web mail stinks anyway with the idiotic way they sort stuff for you.

So what alternatives are there? Even after some research and reading I still don't know if iCloud/me mail (or whatever it's called) is a free service or not. And if it comes with push mail and calendar sync (need to sync the mobile calendar with my Thunderbird desktop calendars).

Can anyone explain all this to me again? Thanks

kevintech said:

How about this scenario:

I upgrade my 4S to the iPhone 5 and set my gmail account under exchange but only fetch hourly, will active sync still work?

Click to expand...

Depending on when you get your iPhone 5, you may or may not be able to set up active sync at all. But if you are happy with fetch, then you can set it up as a regular IMAP account anyway.

The only thing you won't be able to do is have push mail through the default iOS Mail app. You can do fetch through the regular Mail app, you can do push through the Google Gmail app. You can have both set up simultaneously, using the Gmail app to notify you of new messages, then open the Mail app to read them. In that case, you can leave the Mail app to manually fetch messages only when you open the app.

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7enderbender said:

So what alternatives are there? Even after some research and reading I still don't know if iCloud/me mail (or whatever it's called) is a free service or not. And if it comes with push mail and calendar sync (need to sync the mobile calendar with my Thunderbird desktop calendars).

Can anyone explain all this to me again? Thanks

Click to expand...

The Gmail iOS app has push, and it's really fast- messages pop up on my phone faster than on Gmail webmail on my computer (that is I hit refresh as soon as the message comes on my phone, and the new message doesn't come in as fast, it usually takes a couple of refreshes.)

Synchronizing Google calendar and contacts can be done through alternative methods as well.

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bigjnyc said:

Just out of curiousity from a technical standpoint which wastes more battery? PUSH or FETCH.... I would think that with FETCH polling the server every 15 minutes that would waste more battery.... Obviously manual fetch would waste the least, but where does Push stand?

Click to expand...

I think it depends on the implementation, and user habits.

Someone posted earlier that they were getting better battery life using push with the Gmail app, instead of Active Sync. I am trying this now, and anecdotally this seems to be the case so far for me. So those are 2 push services that seem to differ in power usage.

With push you are constantly keeping an open connection with the server, with fetch you are checking the server at regular intervals. There's a lot of variables user-side and server-side that could affect which uses more network traffic and power.

7enderbender said:

So what alternatives are there? Even after some research and reading I still don't know if iCloud/me mail (or whatever it's called) is a free service or not. And if it comes with push mail and calendar sync (need to sync the mobile calendar with my Thunderbird desktop calendars).

Can anyone explain all this to me again? Thanks

Click to expand...

iCloud email is free for the first 5GB, but that space is shared across other iCloud applications, such as device backup. It comes with push mail, calendar, and contacts.

I would gladly use the Gmail app since it has push. The problem is if I read a message on my iPad or on the desktop the notification on my iPhone stays on the lock screen. Whereas using Exchange with apple mail if I read a message on another device the lock screen notification goes away.

Not sure if this is a problem with the Gmail app or with Apple notifications.