There is nothing like the feeling of knowing that your iPhone is in sync with the rest of your world. Knowing that your email, your calendar, and your contacts are accessible and modifiable wherever you go. For a long time the only way to achieve this bliss with your Google services was to create settings or hacks for each individual aspect you wanted synced.

Apple did not design the iPhone to work with Google’s excellent array of free services but designed it to work with their rather expensive offering, MobileMe. So the process for Google users worked to a point but was often very messy. You never actually felt good about how the syncing was working and you were also not able to receive PUSH notifications for your email.

But Google worked hard on the problem, and with a little help from Microsoft, have made it so that you can keep all your email, contacts, and calendar in sync with incredible ease.

First though let me give a brief overview on why you may want to use Google Sync.

Why should you use Google Sync?

Google Sync can allow you to let Google host all your email, calendar, and contacts. It will also allow you to receive PUSH notifications for your Gmail, something which IMAP can’t do. Google Sync uses an exchange server and so it is a full sync with your iPhone, unlike setting up your email or calendar separately which often only provide a small layer of integration. If you make changes on your iPhone they are synced back to the server and stored in the cloud. This is great if you are someone who wants all your information accessible through the web.

When should you not use Google Sync?

Should you want to continue to sync and backup your contacts and calendar with iTunes you should probably not use Google Sync to control these. Google Sync does not backup to iTunes as it uses the Google server to backup your data. You also should not use Google Sync, but rather IMAP, if you would like to access multiple email accounts and if you don’t care about PUSH notifications (however in iPhone OS 4.0 you will be able to have multiple exchange accounts).

Assuming you do want to use Google Sync, here is how you can use Google Sync to achieve pure iPhone bliss and get PUSH notifications!

Step 1 – BACKUP your contacts

I shouldn’t need to say this, but given how the syncing process works it is important that you make sure you backup all of your iPhone contacts. I would manually copy them across into your Gmail ‘My Contacts’ list or even write them down somewhere offline. If you save them in your address book you won’t be able to access them from your iPhone when we are finished.

Step 2 – Add an Exchange account

On your iPhone go into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Make sure you don’t have any other accounts set up and if you do remove them. Select Add Account.

You will now be presented with a list of all different account types. From this list please select Microsoft Exchange.

Step 3 – Enter all your account information

Once you have selected an Exchange account you will be presented with a screen full of settings you need to enter. Start by entering the email address you use with your Google services (Gmail or Google Apps).

Select the Username Field and enter your full Google email address as your Username and in the Password field enter the password you use to log into Google with.

Once you have entered all this information press Next.

Your iPhone will try to automatically find Google’s server but it won’t be able to and so will present you with a Server field. In this server field you need to enter m.google.com as your Exchange server.

Once you have entered this press Next.

Step 4 – Decide which services to sync

You will now be asked which Google services you would like to sync with your iPhone. By default only the Calendar and Mail services are selected.

If you would like to also sync your contacts with Google change the Contacts setting to ON.

You will then be presented with the following message asking you what you would like to do with your contacts.

Now each of these options does a different thing.

If you select Keep on My iPhone, all of your existing iPhone contacts will be synced with your ‘All Contacts’ folder in Gmail. If you are anything like me, this could get extremely messy as Google often automatically adds contacts to this folder. While this is annoying if you do select Keep on My iPhone you will still be able to sync your contacts through iTunes.

However, the best way to achieve pure iPhone bliss is to select Delete. This will remove all of your iPhone contacts and replaces them with your ‘My Contacts’ folder in Gmail. Choosing this option will prevent you from syncing your contacts through iTunes but it won’t matter as any changes you make will be uploaded to Google cloud. However please make sure that you have backed up your contacts before you do this (you should have already done so as per Step 1).

Once you have selected the option which best suites you, press Done.

Your iPhone is now setup to make use of Google Sync.

Step 5 – Change the settings to best suit you

Personally I find the default settings ok for Google Sync, however there are some slight modifications which I needed to make so that it worked best for me.

By default Google Sync will only sync 3 days worth of email. To change this go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Your Google Sync Exchange Account. On this page you can adjust the number of Mail days to sync and you can also adjust which folders to PUSH. I chose No Limit for Mail days as I would like to access all of my email.

If you receive a lot of email you may find that PUSH gets rather annoying after a while. You can however turn this off or change the frequency by going to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data.

Google Sync also allows you to select which calendars you would like to sync with your iPhone. To make your selection you need to go to m.google.com/sync if you are a Gmail user or m.google.com if you are a Google apps user. For Gmail users, just login with your Gmail account and select your device from the list. Google Apps users will need to login and select the sync icon, you will then be able to select your device from the list. Once you have selected your device you can then select which calendars to sync.

Once you have changed all the settings to match your personal preferences, you will be fully synced up with Google allowing you and your iPhone to finally be in the ultimate state of bliss.