How to have Push Email on your iPhone with GMail

I'm looking at switching from fetch to push on my GMail. I've heard mixed reports on the battery. Even Google's page on Sync says it may use more battery:

http://www.google.com/mobile/sync/

"As with any service using push technology, Google Sync may cause increased usage of your device's battery."

Does your experience contradict this?

My experience I have more battery life switching to push. I don't believe it would suck more battery. As I stated, Pulling relies on a set interval to query the server for new emails, like 15 minutes or one hour. Yes the article states to turn off push emailing and go with manual, and yes manual polling is much better but not practical. If you pull at 15 intervals or even 1 hour intervals I can tell you that push emailing will save your battery more. Your battery will not die because of the push email but because of other activities you do on the phone.

Android phones follow the same philosophy, as push emailing preserves their batteries more than pulling, so there is no reason the same logic wouldn't work on the iPhone. I personally love having push, think it is something Google should have been advertising more than IMAP pulling, but perhaps it's a political reason rather than technical.

If anyone has any other experiences, please let us know here, I would be interested to see another point of view.

This tip is fantastic!! Thank you very much.

I just found this answer in a Google search, followed the instructions and it seems to do what I want, except: when I receive an email (iPhone 3GS, iOS 4.1) instead of being shown as 1 received, the display shows 2 received. I assume that is because the iPhone is receiving it in the 'Exchange Server' as well as in 'Gmail', although that is a bit of a guess and a stretch of my understanding of how this all works.

Is there a workaround to avoid this duality?

Thanks very much.

--Bob

Hi nice post,
It just helped me understand why one of my clients set up his iPhone as an exchange to receive push gmails. Personally I have the Droid X so it can be difficult to know how each phone is configured. You lawyed out the steps nicely though thanks.

I tried these steps to set up my gmail on my Iphone 4 (Verizon). It keeps telling me password for exchange is incorrect. I know it's correct. Have you seen this?