Google Releases Sync for iPhone and Windows Mobile - Push Gmail Coming Soon?
Starting today, you can wirelessly sync your contacts and calendars from Gmail and Google Apps with the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones. A number of third-party providers already offered similar sync capabilities, but now, Google itself can automatically push calendar and address book changes directly to these phones. In typical Google fashion, this new product is released as a beta, and there are still a few known problems, but in our own tests, the push sync worked just as advertised.
Google Sync was already available for Blackberry users and you could already sync your Gmail contacts on the iPhone through iTunes. This, however, was relatively inconvenient and Google surely heard a lot of complaints from business users who needed more 'Outlook-like' capabilities on their phones.
The new sync capabilities are also available for any other phone that supports the SyncML standard.
Some Problems
One problem with this new system is that it will replace all your existing contacts on your phone with your Gmail contacts, which might be a deal breaker for some. Another deal breaker might be the fact that you can only configure one Active Sync account on the iPhone, which would be a problem for those of us who maintain more than one calendar (one private - one for work) and would like to use push for all of those.
Also, your Gmail contact list might a lot messier than you have realized, and it might take some work to manually recreate your current address book in Gmail.
Gmail Push Coming Soon?
Interestingly, Google now uses Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol to push updates wirelessly to the phone, which leads us to believe that enabling push email is the next logical step for Google. Chances are that Google is testing its infrastructure by only supporting ActiveSync for calendars and contacts first, and that it will release support for push email in the near future.
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"Another deal breaker might be the fact that you can only configure one Active Sync account on the iPhone, which would be a problem for those of us who maintain more than one calendar (one private - one for work) and would like to use push for all of those."
Not true - if you point your phone to m.google.com/sync you can set up which calendars you want to include. I believe you can choose up to 5. Also, I did not want my contacts to sync, so I just disabled that option at setup. It has worked flawlessly so far... I will definitely love it when (if) they turn the push email on.
"Also, your Gmail contact list might a lot messier than you have realized, and it might take some work to manually recreate your current address book in Gmail."
One idea for Mac people might be use this: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/addressbooktocsvexporter.html
Export your Apple Address Book then import into gmail contacts. Then you have your info organized the same. I do this manually now and then. (I keep Address Book as my 'master')
I haven't tested what happens once you use this new google sync though.
I currently use http://www.busymac.com/ to keep Calendar in sync
@atariboy
@Justin
I think he was referring to two separate Google accounts with calendars, such as a personal GMail and a Google Apps account for work.
Push GMail already exists... on the Blackberry. With a Blackberry account setup to use BIS, I often receive GMail on my Blackberry before it shows up in the browser.
Posted by: ahockley.myvidoop.com
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February 9, 2009 2:13 PM
Wow.. thats Cool.
What sucks is I just paid money for a GooSync account last week! Bah, if only I waited one week.
There goes GooSync's business model....
Hurry up with push gmail for iphone.. Then I can get rid of my yahoo account!
Push Gmail has been available since IMAP was introduced. It just needs a compatible IMAP client to work - and the iPhone isn't one of them.
@StuartM: IMAP works on the iPhone, and has for some time. I use it daily.
@Chris: yes, Google's contacts are atrocious. I have really screwed myself by importing Google's contacts into various programs. The problem is that Google adds people to your contacts if they email you - even if it's from a big mailing list. This is really really bad - one of the worst behaviors of GMail, really, if not THE worst behavior.
It's getting really confusing to figure out how to use all of these tools together to maintain calendar, contacts, and email in a coherent, organized fasion. I think that would be a good RWW post.
check out vufone.com is has all that and much more. automated,periodical hassle free sync to the web. contacts, calendar, messages, photos, videos and music - all synced to a single account and can be connected to Google, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa etc.
These guys support Windows Mobile, Symbian, J2ME, Android and
Blackberry
http://www.vufone.com
/Vx
@ Jim
Even if he was referring to Work and Personal calendars, you can easily share them with your one account. I have both my work, personal and church calendars all synced up very nicely.
The biggest problem with the Google Sync Sync is, that Gmail adds every adress to the contacts-app, which you sent ever a mail. Thankfully I've backed up my contacts before
The mail slider for me is active. Little more testing but it seems gmail push does work on the iPhone. Maybe they've let this option work for a view people.
I get the Gmail to iPhone syncing but how to sync address book on the mac, with he first two.
I have enabled syncing in the address book prefs but it doesn't seem to be working.
I just finished syncing and cleaning everything up, which was expected. But this is still pretty lousy for the time being...
1. Google does not support all the fields that exist on the iPhone, like "main" for a phone number and any custom fields you might have made.
2. Per Google's support page, "The iPhone can synchronize up to 3 email address. Phone number synchronization is limited to 2 Home numbers, 1 Home Fax, 1 Mobile, 1 Pager, 3 Work (one will be labeled 'Company Main') and one Work Fax number." This would have been good to know ahead of time.
3. All contact pictures will be deleted from the phone.
4. You are now unable to sync with any other source, such as Outlook or iCal.
5. Companies (contacts with no first or last name) are not handled well by Google. The company name is duplicated in the 'name' field, which causes odd handling of the data by the iPhone ... categorizes second name of company as last name and then sorts by that word.
6. All phone numbers that originate from the iPhone are displayed in gContacts without hyphens or parenthesis. It's small but annoying, because it still looks well formatted on the iPhone.
7. When attempting to turn off Google sync, all contacts on the iPhone will be deleted, so be sure to back up.
I'm sure it will get better in the future, but for now, it's really lacking on google's end.
skoskie, you are correct.....
for Mac users,
... BUT if you turn off contact sync in the Google Sync settings and turn on contact syncing to the Mac address book application (settings in iTune) then the contact sync compatibility problems are taken care of.
Essentially, you'll be syncing OTA calendar directly with Google and your contacts to the address book on Mac during occasional USB cable sync.
According to Google's instructions:
"Mail synchronization is not supported at this time. If you try to turn on this setting, you'll get an error message every time you open the Mail application on your iPhone. It's best to keep Mail synchronization turned off for now."
It sounds like they are planning on it in the future.