Use Gmail to send iPhone email on EDGE and wi-fi

Jul 19, '07 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: gotTheShakes

If you are like me and noticed that not all your emails were being sent when you were on a wi-fi network because of SMTP server settings for local networks, or you noticed that emails set to send via AT&T's SMTP server would only send when connected to the EDGE network (or you're paranoid about sending email via AT&T servers), you can use Gmail as your master SMTP server that will work over both Edge and wi-fi.

I noticed this issue when setting up my work email with the iPhone. My work email only uses the local SMTP of our ISP. My immediate solution was to use AT&T's SMTP server cwmx.com. But I noticed that this would only send if I was solely on the EDGE network. So if I were at home and I was connected to my wi-fi, I would have to turn off my wi-fi on the iPhone and get on the EDGE network to respond to a work email. I found this annoying.

My solution was to use Gmail's SMTP server with an account that I have there, and then use Gmail to spoof my return address so that the emails would appear to come from my work address.

To do this, first we go to our Gmail account. Under settings make sure that you have the POP function turned on (on the Forwarding and POP tab). If not on already, turn it on for all messages from now on. Save the setting. Next go to the Accounts tab. You will want to add an email account and that is the account that you using Gmail to forward all your messages. Once you add this account, Gmail will email you at that account to make sure it is real and that you actually are the owner of it.

Once you verify the email they send you, go back to the Accounts tab in Gmail (force refresh the page if need be) and select the option to have Gmail "Reply from the same address the message was sent to." This will set the account name spoofing. Next we go to the iPhone and into the Settings section for Mail. Go to the offending account's Outgoing mail server settings, and enter this info:

Then go to the Advanced field, and turn on Outgoing Uses SSL, and set the authentication to Password. Now you should be done. Enjoy sending all your email via Gmail whether you are on EDGE or wi-fi.

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