Push Gmail For The iPhone, Finally (It’s Not What You Think)

@OMG! Ponies!: Having multiple "lines" set up should not drain the battery faster, as I believe it is a single connection directly to Apple (well really AT&T I guess which connects to Apple). The service providers (AIM, etc.) send their notification to Apple, and Apple pushes it to you.

But, as I said earlier: having more "lines" open almost guarantees you will be getting more data pulled down; more emails, more IMs, more calendar entries.

If the "lines" are just sitting there empty then no more battery is being used with 800 than with 1.

Disclaimer: ***All of my information in this entire thread can be completely wrong. As I said, I'm a software engineer, not a network or cell engineer.***

KStrike155

Exactly. I set this up for my dad when I hooked him up with my old 2G iPhone.

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

@justinpe: I love my iPhone but I also love the Pre. You really don't need to respond and justify why the iPhone is the better choice for you. You took his bait.

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

@Baldyman1966 is Holding out for a Hero: I actually laughed for a second.

Is that a G1 in your pocket or are you happy to see me?

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

@myneid: Sucks dude. Hopefully not too much time was used building the app.

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

@Justinpaulson: Google can only push calendars and contacts, mail is simply not supported. Check your fetch settings, you might have just received the email right before your phone fetched.

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

@OMG! Ponies!: Thank you! I was waiting for someone to get in his ass about this BS thread. I wonder how long he's been thinking this was legitimate?

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

@KStrike155: One thing I am not able to take away from your answer is whether maintaining multiple "lines" to push providers will drain the battery faster. I'm not alking about actual messages being sent. Just for maintaining that constant connection. Like right now I'm only running Apple's PN service and my connection to MobileMe. If I added Yahoo push email plus push contacts/calendars from Google would that make me any worse than just the two push services I have running now?

jbrandonf likes pie. And Dreamcast

here here

Alex Frank

@loriensleafs: I think you meant Loser! That is unless I'm wrong and you happen to be LOOSE!

@n9n3:
Exactly. 15 minutes is too long.

ApplicationError

@SAfiftyseven:

Instant is where it is at. I want product instant. I want email instant. I want statistics instant. Instant payment… all instant. Who wants to wait for things? Having push via exchange is awesome, I couldn't go back. I used to wait 15 minutes, before getting an email. Now it is sub 1 minute. It's awesome.

ApplicationError

Um, why isn't anyone just forwarding their gmail to a yahoo account. Yahoo has push support. That's what I do and it works just fine.

@Schalliol: I'm confused. My mail app on my iPod Touch is connected to my Gmail and it informs me when I get new mail (it beeps) and shows on the app icon how many unread messages I have. It still needs to download them when I open the app, but it's not too much of a hassle. The only thing is that I need to be actively connected to wifi.

How is push hard to implement with all this already there? Will Gmail never get official push?

The5thElephant

The whole point of email is that you don't have to look at it immediately. Really, while push notifications are very handy, people have been taken over by a drive to do everything instantly.

SAfiftyseven

I would rather have threaded emails.

slepton

Meh. I looked around. Checked out MobileMe (or whatever it's called), gmail, and the likes. Ended up going with a hosted exchange solution. It's only 10 bucks a month, and it's awesome. Got my own domain and email push.

ApplicationError

@PaintTheSkyGrey: keep sniffing, you are way off.

@imTheKing: FYI in the future... it is "you're" when you are trying to say "you are" and "your" when you are trying to imply ownership. Sorry, it's one of my pet peeves.

@Justinpaulson: I smell a troll.

@Cj Perry: Yeah I love the notification system on my Pre as well. Palm really did a great job designing it.

krische

@OMG! Ponies!: Gmail can push, just not on the iphone apparently. I have push Gmail on my Pre and it gets the email within a few seconds.

krische

Is that better or worse than being called a tightener?

jbownsabmw: 2nd class Jalopizen and proud of it

@KStrike155: To clarify: Yahoo's implementation is similar to what I described, while Apple's may go either way.

KStrike155

@TheSonOfKrypton: It looks like I may only be partly right. Again, I'm not 100% sure on the implementation on Apple's end:
"Although they are both based on IMAP, the Yahoo Mail and MobileMe push email services for iPhone do not use a standard form of P-IMAP. Yahoo Mail uses a special SMS message to trigger an email synchronisation, while Apple Inc.'s MobileMe uses a server within Apple that maintains a persistent IP connection to each iPhone.[1]" [en.wikipedia.org]

KStrike155

@Cj Perry:

I would rather have the ability to search all of my emails and delete more than one message at a time. Also, the universal search feature and voice control seem like more compelling features than being able to receive an email the second it is sent to you.

@OMG! Ponies!: very true. I guess I just fetch really fast...

@KStrike155: Makes sense to me KStrike. Thanks for clearing up that misconception.

@OMG! Ponies!: Ahh! Sorry. When you said Push, I thought (considering the context of this article) that you were speaking of Push Notifications. Not email Push. I have no experience with email push so in that case KStrike is dead-on.

This is one of the many reasons I love my Palm Pre. I get Push G-mail. Plus even if I had to deal with a hack like this, the notification system on the Pre wouldn't make this so annoying.

Cj Perry

@loriensleafs: Yeah your a big LOOSEr......

imTheKing

@TheSonOfKrypton: To be honest I thought his original post was 2 questions:
Does push drain the battery any more than fetch?
If I have multiple push apps will it drain more than a single push app?

To really answer the questions (in my understand of push technologies... this is only coming from a software engineer, not a network engineer):
The way push works is, yes, it sets up a perpetual data link, but very little data is going through that link.

The link allows a packet to be sent to the phone which then requires the phone to fetch. If you have 3 different IM apps running (i.e. AIM, GTalk, Facebook) and you are getting messages from all 3, then it will cause more of a battery drain.

The more packets being pushed to the phone, the more times the phone needs to fetch data, the more data is being transferred, the more battery power is used.

If you think using 800 push apps on your phone won't drain the battery more than 1, you are sadly mistaken. That's like saying "I can download a 100GB file without using more battery because I'm using push instead of fetch!"

Data is data is data. The reason push drains battery more is because of the persistent connection with the server for the small packets to travel through.

KStrike155

@miss_roxxan: It's called MobileMe. It instantly downloads your email to your phone as soon as someone send its. That way it's ready for you to read it whenever you want instead of having to open the app then look for new mail and then read it.

MF350z

@bjcbjc:

Yes, instantly when Mail.app fetches to the server, every 15 minutes (minimum).

n9n3

@Justinpaulson: I get my exchange emails on my phone about 3 seconds before they hit my work inbox. That's push. Not that I couldn't wait, just sayin'.

RobotVampire

@Homerjay here for OxyClean!: Well I wouldn't call it Awesomness, but thanks anyway.

@TheSonOfKrypton: Actually, my question is more limited (right now) to multiple email accounts set to push. I have my Exchange account on push. If I have my Gmail (or another email account) set to push as well, will that drain more than just having one email account on Push?

@JessicaAlba: Ask the ladies.

@NYCJason: So suggesting to people that if Push G-mail is something they want there are better ways of getting it then the iPhone is Trolling is it? Time you got a new dictionary Or maybe a braincell.

@KStrike155: That's not what he asked guys. Jesus, I'm serious here: What's wrong with people's reading comprehensions these days? Not directed at only you KStrike, just a general question rather.

OMG! Ponies!, yes you're right. As long as you have push set up for ANYTHING, it sucks the same exact amount of power. It is really doing nothing but setting up a perpetual link between your phone/iPod and the Apple Push Servers, so that link doesn't multiply its use of power the more apps you have pushing notifications to your phone. So it makes sense to load up a bunch of apps that you want pushing stuff to your phone if you're gonna have it on anyways....

I just have it set to update every hour. Most of the email I get is crap anyways so what is the point of a constant vibrating iphone?

[interactiveiphone.com]

JessicaAlba

@Baldyman1966 is Holding out for a Hero: Dont worry. Your awesomeness isn't entirely lost on us.

Please hurry up with Prowl for Windows! I've been using Growl for Windows for the last couple months and love it. Don't leave the Windows PC's out in the cold!

@Clancycoop: well, how it works now is that you go into your mail and THEN it downloads everything. it would be nice if it was downloaded when they come in and update the number of emails you have so when you go check your messages, they are all already there, similiar to how a blackberry does it. this would be great for me since i'm on a subway and underground for a long time. i'd love to check my emails, but if i forget to go into mail before i get on the train, i have to wait until i get to the bridge before i can see any of my new emails since i last checked my mail.

miss_roxxan

@Schalliol: The iPhone checks your email when you pull up the app. So it should be pulling the latest email to you as soon as you open it. What's the point of needing to know you have an email when you don't have the time to look at it anyways?

@Baldyman1966 is Holding out for a Hero: Sweet, thanks for a comment that's absolutely irrelevant to the thread. Troll along slick, nothing to see here.

NYCJason

Just set up a gmail account manually and tell it to use IMAP. No, it doesn't use Apple's push service, but you do get your emails instantly.

bjcbjc

@KStrike155: Haha, nice graphical notice about temperature operating ranges on there. 95F is too hot for it, great, that's three months out of the year down here.

zeroprime

My G-mail is Pushed to my phone, along with my companies exchange data. But thats because I have a G1 rather than an iPhone.

Iphone 3G and 2G users should look forward to this because:

1 - you can set mail.app to manual, thus only having push notifications on, and not push notifications + push mail (battery will suffer)

2 - having mail.app on manual alows user to really terminate it, and remove it from running on background all the time, alowing more free RAM to be available

Antonio Jorge Ferreira

actually i wrote an app that i use that has gmail push via imap idle and a notification badge and it opens up gmails web interface.
i asked google if it was ok to launch it in the appstore and was rudely pointed to their terms and conditions.

myneid

@loriensleafs: Neither do I and I think he is. GET HIM!

IcemanD

zachff:

not...it does not solve the lack of push for gmail problem

Antonio Jorge Ferreira

@Justinpaulson: Look under the Advanced tab. You'll see that Gmail is on Fetch. Yahoo!, MobileMe, and Exchange can push to the iPhone. Gmail cannot.

@Justinpaulson: You obviously have no clue what you are talking about.

KStrike155

@VulnoX:

I was referring to Prowl and by the looks of their installation instructions it does require your desktop.

[prowl.weks.net]

Maybe I am wrong. Please let me know if I am wrong.

glamajamma

@VulnoX: I had push set up with an exchange account and it took more than instantly sometimes. It could be that i'm sending it from my work e=mail to my gmail.

@VulnoX: So what, i'm just fetching every 20 seconds?

@OMG! Ponies!: Push does use some more battery power than fetch.
[www.apple.com]

KStrike155

@Justinpaulson:

Your fetch new data on push uses push for services that support it, Gmail currently does not, so the iPhone only fetches on a set schedule. If its taking 20 seconds for an e-mail to show up, it isn't Push. My works Exchange e-mails show up instantly, because its ACTUALLY Push.

VulnoX

@glamajamma:
Its not a desktop application, its running on someone elses server. Also, if you want that, set up Exchange push e-mails, or MobileMe, or any of the other services that work with corporate e-mail and have 99.9% up time. If you are a super important business that doesn't have some kind of e-mail server, which the iPhone works great with most all of them, then you need to get your act together.

VulnoX

@glamajamma: acres of servers? What push notification email has acres of backup servers? I mean if you use exchange for push, you just have your one exchange server as a backup... And if you are just talking about backing up gmail in general....I think google does have acres of backup servers. What is your point really, i'm confused.

@Justinpaulson: Mine does the same. Also works for calander updates.

TideGuy

@MikeSWelch: set up your gmail...turn your fetch new data to push....done

I think the jailbroken notifier setting is just as helpful

zachff

@doul0s: My point below exactly. I think I can wait 20 seconds for the earthshattering news from Google.

bdthurston

@doul0s: also know a couple friends that do

@doul0s: mine does...sorry bro

@Justinpaulson: Please sir, tell us how to set it up right.

MikeSWelch

@Justinpaulson: and a picture to prove it...

[i64.photobucket.com]

try www.nuevasync.com they just added push to gmail via activesync, its only $25/yr and they have free services too, calendar, and contact syncing.

doul0s

And really how hard is it to add GMail as one of your email accounts? Personally I find using notifications from GMail annoying and intrusive. Just give me a number in the little red badge that includes both my MobileMe and GMail messages thanks.

bdthurston

@Justinpaulson: its called fetch! gmail doesn't support push thru the apple mail app yet.

doul0s

@Jeff Trine: The only problem is, once you open the phone and go to the app to read the article it doesn't put the badged article in a very convenient place to view them unless i'm missing something.

@Schalliol: I don't get a ton of e-mail, are you calling me a looser??

loriensleafs

@Justinpaulson: and i just tested it and my phone received the e-mail in about 20 seconds with a vibration to notify me...

Um gmail already pushes....mine does anyway...maybe you're just not setting it up right??

I would rather not rely on a desktop application to push my email. I want acres of servers as a backup so my service is always on. I guess that is the difference between business tools and toys.

glamajamma

That's a good question Ponies. Based on Apples observations I would assume it's not since they were intended on limiting the amount of apps that would push to your device. But, that may just mean that the push itself would use more batter as well as constantly checking.

So far, the AP News notifications have been great. Not too few, not too many.

Jeff Trine

@Schalliol: So in other words you are fine with how it is now.

Is push a zero-sum battery drain? If I have more than one account set to push, will that drain my battery faster than just having one set to push?

Hmm, I just want my email to arrive instantly so it's there when I have just a moment to look at it, but I don't want to be notified if I have a new message. Who gets so little email anymore that they want to be bothered as soon as a new message comes in?

dboreham