Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

sadievan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 20, 2010
133
0
Can someone tell the the difference or advantage to setting up a google email account as an exchange account vs using the Gmail setting to set it up on your iPhone?

Thanks in advance
Carol
 
Setting it up as an exchange gives you a few advantages such as faster PUSH, and also allows for the syncing of contact and calendars I believe.
 
mini hijack for the thread. On exchange when it does contact support. When i save a contact on my phone as soon as im done it saves automatically to my gmail account?
 
Exchange has some advantages, but I still prefer to set up my G-Mail as IMAP.

For one thing, it doesn't limit how far back you can save e-mail in your iPhone's inbox. I have a few e-mails from a year or two back with information I look up every now and then. With Exchange those e-mails would still exist in g-mail, they just wouldn't be kept on my phone.

Also, even though Exchange pushes faster when it works, I've found IMAP to be more reliable.

So they're little things, but overall I prefer G-Mail IMAP on my iPhone.

Setting it up as an exchange gives you a few advantages such as faster PUSH, and also allows for the syncing of contact and calendars I believe.

It will do calendars, but not contacts.

I do both of those things through MobileMe, so they weren't issues for me. But yeah, if there is someone without MobileMe then G-Mail Exchange is probably a better idea for that person.
 
mini hijack for the thread. On exchange when it does contact support. When i save a contact on my phone as soon as im done it saves automatically to my gmail account?

Yup, its live syncing of contacts/calendars/mail from your phone to Gmail.
 
I use exchange for gmail as well. It's nice to have your emails pushed to your phone almost immediately after they are sent to you.

Unfortunately you can't search the server for your previous email messages when set up as exchange.
 
Weird. It must be something I have set differently within G-Mail online because it doesn't show it as an option on my phone.

I never worried about it since I didn't need it.

Yes, there is a setting under the Gmail portion for mail accounts. I always use them both as I sync my contacts and calendar in case I lose my phone. Plus when I'm at home or where ever I can use the computer to add other items to the contact.
 
Yes, there is a setting under the Gmail portion for mail accounts. I always use them both as I sync my contacts and calendar in case I lose my phone. Plus when I'm at home or where ever I can use the computer to add other items to the contact.

Did you set up your account as an exchange account or ad a gmail account.

Carol
 
Exchange has some advantages, but I still prefer to set up my G-Mail as IMAP.

For one thing, it doesn't limit how far back you can save e-mail in your iPhone's inbox. I have a few e-mails from a year or two back with information I look up every now and then. With Exchange those e-mails would still exist in g-mail, they just wouldn't be kept on my phone.

I'm not sure if this is a new feature, but I just noticed it myself. After setting up Exchange, you can change how far back it fetches emails from. I believe the default is two weeks or something. But there's a "No limit" option available, which should retrieve your mail from forever ago. At least, it works for me anyways.

My understanding was that Push with Exchange also offers better battery life over "Pull", although I'm sure this is one of those never-ending debates. I personally, did notice a battery life increase after switching to Exchange from IMAP.
 
Gmail on Exchange is the better choice because it offers calendar and contacts sync plus faster push.
I have my iPad set up to sync my Google calendar and contacts over Google Sync and my iPhone set up using Exchange. Both services sync my calendar and contacts - http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/

I can't comment on faster push because I have everything set up for manual sync.

One day I should rationalise this. I did my iPad via Google Sync because at the time iOS 3.x only supported syncing a single Exchange user and I have multiple Google calendars that I sync to which is why Exchange wasn't an option for me when I first got the iPad. By the time I got my iPhone 4 Exchange seemed the more obvious and standard way to do it.

- Julian
 
Gmail on Exchange is the better choice because it offers calendar and contacts sync plus faster push.

Exactly. I have had mine set up as Exchange for as long as I've had my phone and no problems whatsoever. It's great that you can also check your old emails and it's not limited to a certain number of emails.
 
Thanks for all the responses.

When my husband bought his iphone recently, the guy at the ATT store set up his gmail account for him. I think he set it up as an exchange account. I really like how it makes the corrections right away on his contacts and calendar without even hooking up to the computer.

I use Outlook to sync my iphone and am seriously thinking of setting up a gmail account. I have to physically connect my iphone to my computer to sync my contacts and calendar. I will still use my ISP's mail account as my main one.

Thanks
Carol
 
My understanding was that Push with Exchange also offers better battery life over "Pull", although I'm sure this is one of those never-ending debates. I personally, did notice a battery life increase after switching to Exchange from IMAP.

Does it work for you now?

When they added that option I tried it but it didn't actually work. I may give it another shot if they've cleard up the problems.
 
Yep, it's working for me now. Granted, my oldest email is from January of this year, but that's still beyond the next highest choice of 1 month, so I'm assuming it must be working.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.