Syncing Google services with iOS 4+ question

[tuna]

1: I currently have my iPhone 3GS setup to sync with Google via the Exchange workaround and it seems to work perfectly (at least for email). Is it worth it to replace this setup with the standard "Gmail" account option that has existed since iOS 4 came out? Does that option push email, contacts, and/or calendar?

2: Back when I was setting up Google Sync through the Exchange workaround, Calendar would not sync from the iPhone to Google Calendar. In other words, my Calendar App would pull all my events that were in Google Calendar, but if I tried to enter an event through Cal App, it would just get overwritten by the cloud... which was terrible. Is this fixed now? Through the Exchange workaround and/or the iOS4 Gmail option?

3: If I sync my iPhone contacts with Google Contacts, will it import "Other Contacts"? For those who are unfamiliar, "Other Contacts" seems to be a standard Google Contacts group for people who you have exchanged email with... but don't have any other information on. For example, under "My Contacts" I have 344 people who I took from my phone and everyone has a name, a phone number, and many have an email address and other information. Under "Other Contacts" I have 596 entries but the majority are an email address alone without even an associated name. Since this is going on my iPhone, I would only want the contacts under "My Contacts". If I could make it so that the contacts from "Other Contacts" would not appear in my contacts list but would automatically populate email forms if I began to type them... that would be the best solution, but not entirely necessary. My main concern is that "Other Contacts" should not sync with my contacts list on the iPhone.




Background:
A long time ago (before iOS 4) I set up my iPhone to sync with my gmail through Google's Exchange workaround and for email at least it always worked perfectly. At the time google calendar sync didn't work both ways and I didn't have any contacts in Google Contacts so I also bought MobileMe and am currently using MobileMe to sync contacts and calendar. I would like to be prepared to ditch MobileMe completely if the service is not free by the time that I would have to renew.

Thanks for the help

 

[tuna]

Alright I figured it out myself.

The Exchange solution still works better than the official "Gmail" account setup and now calendar and contacts through Exchange work perfectly with Google Calendar and Google Contacts.

I already knew that push gmail through Exchange worked perfectly. I tested push contacts by adding a contact for the phone and checking for it in Google Contacts in my browser: synced incredibly fast. Then I tested it the other way around by deleting the test contact from my browser: contact was removed from the phone incredibly fast. Ran the same test process with Calendar: worked perfectly again.

Assuming that you can get Google services to work flawlessly with the Mac desktop apps (iCal, Address Book, and Mail), which I believe you can do, MobileMe is not worth MSRP. Yeah there's FindMyiPhone and iDisk, but there's always the Dropbox alternative as well.

Back when I bought MobileMe, which I got at a discount with a deal where I was buying 3 phones from AT&T in that transaction, Google calendar didn't work through Exchange. Now it does. MobileMe has been relegated to iDisk use. I happened to use iDisk today... but I could have done what I needed with a free Dropbox account. I should probably sign up for one of those today.

 

[tempusfugit]

for what its worth, I use google apps in the following way:

I push calendars/contacts but NOT mail.

I set up my google account as a regular imap and only enable mail and notes.

This way my calendars/contacts are all auto-synced to the cloud (with activesync) and I fetch emails periodically to save battery life and such.

Also, a HUGE issue to me about google active sync is that searching the server for email info is completely undependable and most of the time doesn't work in the slightest. imap seems to search the server both quickly and reliably, another reason I don't use activesync for email.

In my experience, mobileme (which I have as well) pushes email much more reliably than google. If only mobileme allowed you to use your own domain for your email address, then I would never use google apps again. But, as this is not the case, and I own a sweet domain (my last name.TLD) I do make use of google apps in addition to mobileme.