Changes in the deletion of emails arrived yesterday

Jan 16, 2008 23:06 GMT  ·  By

Yesterday's launch of the new Gmail experience for the iPhone was kind of rushed by the dev team, so they never got the chance to note all the updates that had been implemented. Slowly, probably one every couple of days, they will reach Internet light and show everybody what the engineers have worked so hard for.

The IMAP feature that was released by Google in late October is fully functional and as useful as ever when it comes to syncing mail. If you read a message on the iPhone it will show as read in the Gmail account when you check it using a desktop system, if you delete one it will also be deleted in the account. No, hold it, that last one was just a dream for users, the Mecca of IPhone IMAP, but with the last update, hitting the "Delete" button actually does what it's supposed to do.

It won't do it like the original, deleting it forever, instead it will send it to your Trash folder and then unless you do something about it, it will be deleted in 30 days. In case you want to archive it instead of deleting it, you are given that option through the use of the "Other" dropdown menu and follow the video posted on Youtube that deals with the problem.

On the other hand, "if you have already manually configured your iPhone to access Gmail using IMAP via this "Other" menu option, then nothing will change for you, and you're good to go. (When you delete a message on your iPhone, it will get archived in Gmail, not moved to Trash. Just as it always has)," says Product Manager Keith Coleman on the Official Gmail Blog.

It's good that we were noticed. I know people who just quit using the "Delete" button when accessing their Gmail accounts via their iPhone. I guess this means that the promised experience is pretty much as close to the real deal as can be.