iPhone Email Woes

Using Gmail on the iPhone, or any POP3 email service, sucks.

When I receive a new email, it shows up on both Gmail and my iPhone, and I have to mark it as read in both places since there isn't any synchronization. It is irritating to have to manage email in two places, plus on the iPhone this can be a pain since you have to actually load the email to mark it as read, which can be slow.

Another quirk is that whenever I send an email, my sent message shows up as a new unread message, though I've heard there is a workaround for this issue.

I've been a loyal Gmail user and advocate for two years now, and it is hard to imagine giving it up. I really love the tagging and archiving of messages, super-fast searching, and the way subjects are organized into threads.

In order to really enjoy email on the iPhone, you need an IMAP provider. I don't know that Gmail could offer IMAP even if they wanted to due to the fact that tags are used instead of folders.

Here are my options as I currently see them:

1. Continue to use Gmail and just live with the annoyances. I'll still get to enjoy the awesome Web experience and stay loyal to Google (plus not have to change email addresses).
2. Get a new Yahoo address. I used to use Yahoo and still have that address, but it has become buried in spam, so I would need a new one. This would have the advantage of push integration with the iPhone and IMAP support. The drawbacks are that I would have to sync my address book from time to time (I keep contacts in my Mac's Address Book, which syncs perfectly with the iPhone) and Yahoo's Web interface is covered with annoying ads (Gmail's ads are very unobtrusive), though I think for a small fee I could eliminate these.
   
3. Begin using my .Mac account as my primary email service. This option will allow me to use IMAP (I don't believe there is push integration with the iPhone, but I would be surprised if this wasn't in the works), sync my address book automatically with the Web interface, and use IMAP with Mail.app (not sure if Yahoo allows this). The drawback of this option is the fact that my email address is now tied to an expensive service with only 500 MB of disk space.

If I do choose to change my email address, I think I'll give everyone an address that forwards to the new service in order to hedge my bets. Plus it would be nice to use my domain for email.