Since Gmail released IMAP I have been fiddling with Apple mail and Gmail syncing while waiting for the arrival of an iPhone (next week ).

Because my Gmail accesses four email accounts I thought it might be a good idea to use Gmail's IMAP on the iPhone and Apple mail to keep the whole shemozzle synced. The problem I'm finding is that mail can take a long time to arrive due to Gmail infrequent mail fetching.

For those of you already using the phone, should I bother with this set-up or does the phone sync with Apple mail pop accounts sufficiently?

I personally do use it, because I hate having read 10 emails while I have been out and then coming home to Mail 3.0 and having the same 10 emails marked as unread or not deleted, even though I have dealt with them. That is what POP will do.

I find IMAP on the iPhone to be sufficient for my needs. If you need it faster, I would say either check manually or have a scroll down the iPhone thread page, there is an article about a system to make IMAP in gmail 'push' the message to your phone as soon as it is received

Yep, read that but it looks a little shaky. The only problem is Gmail is so slow. Thanks for your input.