Tutorial to Activate Gmail Push (costs $20 a year)

[wildonrio]

Ok guys, I wanted it so bad that after a lot of thinking and tinkering around, I finally figured out the most seamless way to do it. It WILL cost $20 to do, so if that doesn't interest you then stop reading now. Currently this is what is happening on my phone:

1. Someone sends an email to my Gmail account.
2. I am instantly alerted on my iPhone of the email with the new email chime.
3. I go in and read the email and it is marked as read on the server.

Sounds nice huh? Well it's true. But it's a little weird to set up, I'm not gonna lie. Basically what happens is you have three email accounts, a Gmail one, a Yahoo! Plus one, and another "trash" Gmail account. You have Gmail forward everything to Yahoo!, then have Yahoo! push to your iPhone, then have your trash Gmail account pull all your Yahoo! mail out of the Inbox and delete it so you don't get duplicate emails on your phone. There's obviously a lot that goes on in the background here, but once it's set up, you won't notice any of it and it will seem like Gmail is simply pushing on its own. Here are the steps:

1. If you don't already have one, sign up for a Yahoo! email account and purchase the Mail Plus option. It costs $20 a year, but allows POP access to the account. This is vital for this to work.
2. Go into your Gmail account's Settings, then Forwarding, and have it forward a copy of all your email to your Yahoo! account.
3. Now create a trash Gmail account, go to Settings, then Accounts, and add your Yahoo! account there so that it pulls your email from Yahoo! and does NOT leave a copy on the server (this is the default option).
4. On your iPhone, add your Yahoo! account to your Mail app.
5. Now go to Settings, then Mail, then Fetch New Data and switch Push to ON (if it isn't already), and then Fetch to "Manually".
6. Now go to Advanced and make sure it says that Gmail is set to Manual, and Yahoo! is set to Push.

You're done. I've only been testing this for about an hour now, but it's working perfectly so far.

On the other hand, if you want to do this process for free, you could just use a normal Yahoo! account, but your red badge will continue to count up forever unless you go in there and manually delete them every once in a while. This, to me, is very annoying.

If you try this process out, please let me know your experience and how well it works for you, and if there is a way we can improve it. Thanks.

 

[yetanotherdave]

Well done for getting it working, but I think I'd rather stick with a 15 minute fetch time and wait for google to eventually enable push. There's no email I need that urgently.

 

[JForestZ34]

I don't trust yahoo mail.. Sometimes it doesn't push like it should... Sometimes the mail will come in at 4:00pm but yet it won't come across my phone until 4:30-5:00pm.. I just think that yahoo is unreliable....


James

 

[vinay427]

Well done for getting it working, but I think I'd rather stick with a 15 minute fetch time and wait for google to eventually enable push. There's no email I need that urgently.

Is it Google's or Apple's fault? Because Gmail pushes on BBs. It would be great if Google set up Gmail with Google Sync, and I think they are planning it. I use Google Sync to push my Calendar an Contacts using Exchange.

 

[iphoneCDN]

I'm sure Google is working on Push for Gmail with 3.0. Tonnes of Google'ers use iPhones and I bet they want Push just as much as we do. It's going to come, just a matter of time.

 

[Knolly]

Sort of the setup I have...

I have GMail bring in my other email via POP3, and it forwards all of it to my MobileMe and auto-archives it. I use Mail on my computer and send only from either my GMail or other email as necessary.

*shrug*

It's not THAT much better. I more did it as a sort of proof of concept, haha.

 

[philgilder]

Is it Google's or Apple's fault? Because Gmail pushes on BBs. It would be great if Google set up Gmail with Google Sync, and I think they are planning it. I use Google Sync to push my Calendar an Contacts using Exchange.

google pushing on blackberrys is thanks to blackberry, not gmail
and rumors suggest google sync of calendar and contacts was a test to see how well email would work

 

[ajthomason]

Well done for getting it working, but I think I'd rather stick with a 15 minute fetch time and wait for google to eventually enable push. There's no email I need that urgently.

I will second this - the default option is fine. For some reason my iPhone always alerts me to a new email a few seconds before my laptop does and my laptop checks every single minute.

I have a feeling (although cannot prove anything) that IMAP on Gmail will actually check itself more often than every 15 minutes or is alerted somehow when a new message arrives without actually being Push.

 

[Shockre]

you could just buy mobileme subscrition for 20$ on eBay and you wouldn't have to deal with all this.

 

[Ding.Dong]

I don't trust yahoo mail.. Sometimes it doesn't push like it should... Sometimes the mail will come in at 4:00pm but yet it won't come across my phone until 4:30-5:00pm.. I just think that yahoo is unreliable....

I agree. I've had Yahoo mail on my iPhone 2G since October '07 and it's never pushed reliably. I'd say about 50% of emails actually get pushed to the phone and the rest only show up when I manually check them.

 

[anjinha]

The title of the thread is a bit misleading, you're not actually activating Gmail push, this is just a workaround.