Google (or is it Apple?) somehow never managed to bring us push Gmail on the iPhone, fortunately thanks to push notifications there are now good alternatives to this issue.
Mail notifier is one of them, it’s an amazing utility that allows you to receive a push notification every time a new mail reaches your inbox. It’s very practical as you get a preview of the messages right away and you can even save some battery by turning off email fetching.
It already allowed you to tap into your Gmail and Hotmail inboxes and with today’s update you can now use it with any IMAP-enabled email account.
It goes for $3.99 and it’s a must-have.
[Update] : Since September Google actually added the possibility to have traditional push mail, it slipped out of my mind. I nevertheless still believe Mail Notifier is a better solution. Thanks to Dan and Courtney Grey for the tip!
Push email is offered for the iphone via Exchange Activesync licensed from Microsoft by Google. http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-sync-now-with-push-gmail-support.html
Just what I need.
I have it for a long time now, and it works great.
One additional detail in case you don’t notice it, this app lets you add several Gmail accounts as also several Hotmail accounts. That’s a key point to take into account because it’s the only Gmail notifier that have it.
This article is incorrect. Google has enabled push Gmail through the iPhone’s native MS Exchange support.
Sorry, how is push notifications for mail better than actual push mail?
I personally prefer it as you when you get the notification you can just check what’s the message about or who sent it on your lock screen.
I also prefer it, as it does not drain your battery at all downloding useless mails from your account. If you receive an important one, then you can download it.
I really like PushMail. Only 2.99 one time as opposed to the annual fee with Mail Notifier. Silence periods, custom sounds, custom profiles for selected emails, etc. And others seem to like it too since it’s rated 4 1/2 stars.
Yea, but for it to work you need to setup a new e-mail address and then forward all your emails to that random e-mail address. Who wants to do that. Not to mention that you can’t do forwarding with AOL, Hotmail and many other accounts.
Also, PushMail does not have the ability to set different ringtones for different email accounts, which Mail Notifier does.