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I am trying to decide if it is better to use the IMAP/CalDav option for accessing my GMail/Google Calendar on my iPhone vs. Using the exchange connection. Anybody got pros and cons of the different options?

What I know so far is this:

  1. I have to use exchange for syncing contacts, so I will have exchange setup for that no matter what.
  2. The IMAP/CalDav option doesn't have push
  3. The Exchange option seems to be buggier than IMAP/CalDav

Any other thoughts?

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Exchange (Google Sync) for GMail lacks some features that you are probably used to--search and cloud drafts. The "known limitations" are listed here: http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139635.

My experience with CalDAV in iCal are that multiple calendars on a single account are a bit squirrely to work with—you won't be able to get each calendar listed by itself under the primary google account heading. The calendars end up in a set of subfolders, depending on how you end up configuring it. That said, I don't know how the same thing would look on the iPhone.

What I do and recommend would be to continue using IMAP for GMail access--there's nothing wrong with it and you don't gain anything by moving to exchange. I do use Google Sync for contacts and calendars since it's the closest I can get to the functionality of MobileMe for free, and I'm very happy with it. For desktop access (aside from the webapp) I like BusyMac (post hyperlink limit reached; Google it) Software's products: one is an iCal superset clone and another is a sync utility that makes your Google Calendars show up in iCal just like MobileMe would.

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    I use Exchange (Google Sync) for Mail, Contacts, and Calendar. The Mail app is fine for reading, but it does lack the ability to permanently delete messages, etc (known limitations). For organizing, I jump over to Safari and use the excellent mobile version of GMail.
    – Mark Larson
    Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 21:11

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