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30 Days of iPhone – Day 19 “Gmail and Yahoo Suck on the iPhone”

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I love my Gmail.

I love my iPhone.

I hate them together.

Half the time I attempt to check my mail it can’t connect to the pop server.   If you set it up through the Gmail button on the iPhone it wants to send you a copy of every email you send from the iPhone.  So if you send an email, you instantly recieve a copy of the email you just sent in your inbox.  That gets annoying and old very fast.

I managed to get around that by setting my  gmail account up as a standard pop3 account, but now I get a copy of every email that I send from my Macbook Pro.  Since I use the Macbook Pro for email more than the iPhone, this has actually turned out to be a worse solution.

On top of that, Gmail doesn’t allow you to make folders.  Gmail uses a label option which works fine in the web based gmail, but on the iPhone that means you can’t have any folders on your Gmail account because there is no way to create them.

Yahoo is no better.  While you don’t get copies of your emails, and you can create folders, Yahoo has a security feature where you have to prove that you’re not a spammer by entering  a code on a regular basis.  If you don’t access the Yahoo account on their website this feature will prevent emails from sending from your iPhone, and you have no way to know that his happening until messages stop being delivered.

I am really at a loss as to what to do about this right now.  The “coolness” of just having rich email on my phone has faded, and now I want it to work smoothly.  I have had my Gmail account for YEARS, though.  In fact, right now my Gmail account is sitting at 2014 MB used.  That’s 69% full.  I don’t really want to get another email address, but I will if that’s what it takes.

What email are you using?  Does it work?

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Kokou Adzo

Kokou Adzo is a stalwart in the tech journalism community, has been chronicling the ever-evolving world of Apple products and innovations for over a decade. As a Senior Author at Apple Gazette, Kokou combines a deep passion for technology with an innate ability to translate complex tech jargon into relatable insights for everyday users.

17 thoughts on “30 Days of iPhone – Day 19 “Gmail and Yahoo Suck on the iPhone”

  1. I use IMAP on HostMonster.com. This is where all my web sites, mailing lists, FTP and everything else is hosted and it only costs me about $100 a year.

    HostMonster.com fully support all the normal features of IMAP including multi-sub-folders organization, so it should work on the iPhone (whenever I decide to buy one)… 🙂

    Piko

  2. I moved away from all of my POP accounts to one Gmail account a few months ago, works fantastically. I can access all my work email from the road and at home, no more having to run to the office to get an email.

    This is the one thing keeping me from getting an iPhone. The Gmail program on my Blackberry works very well, and there isn’t anything like it on the iPhone. I have tried accessing the gmail account from Safari on the iPhone, and it works, but it isn’t the best solution by any means. I keep hoping that for v2 Apple allows a version of the Gmail app to be installed directly on the iPhone. While you don’t get the same rich email through the email app on the iPhone, the use of Gmail would be fantastic.

  3. I don’t know what ISP service is like in the States but here in New Zealand we get an email account (often multiple ones) when we sign up. If you have one from that route perhaps you could try that just to see how it behaves.

  4. I don’t have an iPhone yet, but if I did, I would certainly want to set up an IMAP email account on it. That way, your emails folders and flags are always updated in whatever email reader you’re using. So when you send an email from your MacBook, it will show up in the sent folder on the iPhone. When a message gets marked as read on the iPhone, it will not show up as unread when you get home to your MacBook.

    I use 3 email accounts (including .Mac) this way on my Nokia phone and it’s great.

  5. I too am using a .Mac account and indeed it works flawlessly. I also have an Earthlink (POP) account that works fine. I was going to dump the Earthlink account for Gmail but given all the problems people have been having I’ve changed my mind. You’d think that Google would have their act together on the mail front by now.

  6. I must say, i had prepared my self for a less than steller experience with email based on all the info i had about the email app and how it will not work the Microsoft Exchange server.

    My previous phone was a Blackberry 7100t, and we NEVER had blackberry enterprise server running, but did have it connected to our exchange server. Conclusion, the iphone accessing our exchange server via IMAP is great. Folder sync, marking messages as read, ability to file messages within my folder structure. It just works and works well. I am not on the road constantly, so i could see where having a over the air syncing of contacts and calendar would be great, but the iphone syncs with the outlook calendar and contacts just fine. Maybe my expectations were low, but i think it works great with exchange/outlook/entourage.

    They key to the good experience i have had, is 1 single email account that the iPhone syncs with, and access through IMAP. Sounds like POP is sort of a nightmare.

  7. For gmail turn off Recent Mode. Here’s how:
    Settings-Mail-Select your gmail account-Advanced-Use Recent Mode switch that to off. No more annoying messages.

    I hate the method to delete messages one at a time. I wish you select multiple messages and hit delete. A patch will fix this.

    I use .mac,Gmail and yahoo on my iPhone.

  8. I’m using “The Bat! Home Edition” (E-Mail-Software) and my E-Mail-Service-Provider is JPBerlin.de

    Hope this helps,
    Oli

  9. “Gmail uses a label option which works fine in the web based gmail, but on the iPhone that means you can’t have any folders on your Gmail account because there is no way to create them.”

    That sounds like a pain.

    I do use GMail for one of my mail accounts, although, truth be told, I think POP stinks and prefer IMAP. But I do usually read my GMail stuff in Mail.app rather than in the web so the folders issue doesn’t trouble me.

    I’d go with IMAP. However, I’d avoid Yahoo’s push-IMAP. Having the push functionality sounds good in theory, but Yahoo implemeted it badly. Yahoo doesn’t encrypt sign-on, so it’s insecure. See here:

    “iPhone / Yahoo: Too cool to do standards, too hip to do security.”

    https://blog.dave.cridland.net/?p=32

    Besides dot Mac, another alternative would be AOL mail – that’s 2GB of storage free now with IMAP over SSL. Or maybe fastmail.fm would be OK.

  10. I think the iPhone looks amazing but on the other hand, I would hate to shell out all the money for the first model. I think that in another year or so the iPhone will be much more efficient, and most importantly – be able to better handle things like gmail, yahoo etc.

  11. Google will allow you to set filters in your gmail account. Simply create a filter for messages sent by you to skip the inbox and be automatically archived.

  12. Why don’t you get an email from your web site host and use it instead? That’s the way i would go.

  13. Hey Wiz.. sounds good, except then the cool mail icon would be quite useless. Hey, I got a new message (indicated by the number on the envelop)

    1) Click Safari
    2) go to Bookmarks or type the url
    3) log in
    4) Check mail

    too many steps and renders an important piece (to me) useless..

  14. I have a POP account so I got a gmail account to still be able to access my mail on the iphone after I have downloaded to my computer.Does anyone know how to make it so my sent from is my POP account instead of the gmail.I have done all the settings on the web to make it happen but the iphone still sends from gmail

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