This week, Google rolled out free IMAP service to all Gmail users, making its web email product the very best of breed. Here is a great tutorial on how to set up Gmail IMAP for iPhone. Geeks already know exactly why this is so incredibly great, but for those of you who don’t know what this means, let us explain. IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) offers true message syncing between an email client and the mail server. This is especially useful if you access your Gmail account from more than one email client, like say, your iPhone and your work or home computer.
Unlike accessing Gmail from Safari, or even iPhone’s mail app using POP3, IMAP allows you to do things you just can’t do with web or POP3 mail. Here is a comparison of the two.
Technology
- POP3 always downloads all new emails locally to your computer
- IMAP downloads message summaries and doesn’t download the entire message until you explicitly select it
Email Inbox Display
- POP3 downloads all emails into one mail folder called “Inbox”
- IMAP preserves your folder structure in a main folder on the server
Multi-Computer Access
- POP3 is useful if you only access your email from one computer, since the email is typically downloaded locally
- IMAP allows email to be manipulated from the iPhone, a computer at home or the office, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers
Email Storage
- With POP3, your emails can be automatically erased from the server after they are downloaded, freeing up space in your account
- IMAP keeps all emails on the server until you erase them
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