Google just announced that its users can now get their Gmail messages pushed directly to their iPhones and Windows Mobile phones. Push Gmail is now a feature of Google Sync. Google started to support the iPhone, iPod touch, and Windows Mobile in Google Sync earlier this year, but at that time, it could only push calendar and address book changes directly to these phones. Finally, Gmail users will now be able to see messages in the iPhone's mail app without having to regularly ping Google's servers for updates.]]>
Google provides a good set of instructions for how to get this to work with your iPhone and Windows Mobile device, though it really doesn't take much more than just a few minutes to get this to work. As Google has licensed Microsoft Exchange for this feature, you simply bypass the Google Mail setup wizard on the phone in favor of a Microsoft Exchange account and then follow these instructions. If you are already using the calendar and contacts sync, all you have to do is flip one switch in your Microsoft Exchange setup on the phone. Google Sync supports Google Apps accounts, just make sure you enable this feature in your Google Apps dashboard.
Google, of course, already offered this feature for Android users and Blackberry devices. For iPhone users - and especially for business users - this is a big deal, however, as it finally allows Google to offer a feature that Yahoo Mail users were able to enjoy from the day the iPhone launched. It's also worth noting that other services like Nuevasync have offered iPhone users a way to route around this problem for a while already.
It's important to note that the iPhone only offers support for a single Exchange account, so you can't use this new feature to push mail from both a personal and a business account at the same time, for example.
