An Open Letter To Google [Push Email For The iPhone]
The Letter
Dear Google, Inc.,
I’ll start this letter off by saying that, overall, I am greatly satisfied with the services and products that you offer. Gmail offers fantastic spam filtering. There are apps for pretty much anything you could ask for. I’m really looking forward to Google Wave.
I just have one bone to pick with you. For a long time I was a Blackberry guy. Had both of my Gmail accounts linked to my Curve. Push email was a given. You could say I took it for granted. I figured it was just a standard feature with Smartphones. When I got an email in my Gmail inbox, it was immediately delivered to my handheld.
I got an iPhone 3Gs last week, and what to my surprise… I’m having to set my handheld to “fetch” my email every 15 minutes. Are you serious? Google? Are you there? What’s going on here? The iPhone has a friggin’ compass on it, for Christ’s sake! And you’re telling me that it’s up to my phone to keep checking my Gmail server for new mail? (Battery life??)
And it’s not like you’re unaware of the situation. You offer Calendar and Contact syncing via the Exchange Server. Gmail was intentionally left out? That’s the impression we’re left with. You couldn’t have spent the extra couple hours putting that code in with the rest of it?
To say the least, I’m greatly disappointed. This has FAIL written all over it.
In conclusion, I would only suggest that you get someone over there at the Googleplex to finish up what you started and implement Push email for the iPhone. Shouldn’t take more than a couple hours, right? You’ve probably got the code already written. Just push “compile” and release the update.
Thank You
David Garrett (Disappointed Gmail User)
Feel free to email me about this issue: godkillzyou@gmail.com (Warning: May take up to 15 minutes for delivery.)
A Temporary Alternative
I’ve found that MSGPush.com works very well for now, until this issue gets resolved. It involves a short setup process, but it does the trick. You have to set up a new Exchange Server account on your iPhone, but everything gets routed through your Gmail account.
This solution isn’t without its drawbacks. Because you have to set this up as an Exchange Server account, you’ll not be able to sync your contacts and calendars with Google. You can only run one Exchange Server account on your iPhone at a time.
Google, do you see what you’ve done? We’re stuck having to patch these things together ourselves. Please fix this.
I’m right there with you. I foun your post through a google alert I hav for “iPhone gmail push”. So frustrating tht they are so far behind the ball on this
I agree! Bring on the native push Gmail for iPhone. I’ll even pay a small amount for that… Of course, I’d prefer not to.
I wouldn’t go so far as to pay for it. Especially when it’s already FREE for Blackberry users!