The past few days, there have been much talk about Google announcing the sync feature for iPhone users. This new feature allows iPhone users to synchronize gmail contact with the contacts on their iPhones. The sync feature imports all your Gmail contacts onto your contact list on the iPhone. At present, Google sync supports only synchronization of Google Calendar and mail. More features might come soon.

What can you do with Google Sync
In order to use this feature, your iPhone should have firmware, 2.2. or 2.2.1. Setting up is easy and simple. Once the setup is complete, all your gmail contacts would be added to your contacts list on the iPhone. Calendar alerts on gmail are also auto send to the phone.

After enabling this sync feature, you can send mails from the contacts interface simply by tapping on any of the Gmail contacts. Tapping on the Gmail contact takes you to the compose mail page of Gmail. I find this option handy, however, one thing I find buggy about this is that, you are left in the Gmail mailbox even if you choose to cancel sending the mail. Canceling the sending mail option should take me back to the contacts main page, not my Gmail inbox. You can mail photos from your iPhone album, after sending or canceling the operation you are taken back the picture folder. This should ideally be a better navigation option for many users.

Sending of alerts is fine, but after enabling the feature your Calendar page is going to get really bulky in a matter of days. There is no mass delete option, so cleaning up the page is done only by opening the individual entries. This is somewhat disheartening as the phone’s memory got chewed up unnecessarily if you forget to clean up the folder from time to time. Enabling the sync feature loads even old and outdated events, this again is not something that we want.

As this feature is still in beta, it comes with a warning that you could loss all your contacts while enabling the feature. You are advised to take backup of your iPhone to make sure that you are not left helpless if something unwanted should happen. Nothing happened to my contacts when I enable the feature, so it worked fine. Though I find the mailing option handy, I feel it is a bit clunky at present so I have disabled it for now. Sorry Google!