Google recently announced that they are discontinuing EAS for new non Apps accounts (ie, Gmail).
Google’s reasons? Who knows, it’s likely a combination of sticking it to the man or simply wanting to pursue open standards where applicable.
Affected platforms and workarounds (that I know about)
- Android owners: not affected, Google sync works on Android devices out of the box
- iOS users: go download the official (and awesome!) Gmail app for mail. For calendar sync go to your phone’s Settings and add a new Gmail account enabling Calendar sync when asked (you can also enable mail sync but due to the Gmail app you don’t really have to). Finally, for contact sync, add a new account of type “Other” and choose “Add a CardDav account”. Use google.com as the server name and your Gmail credentials to finalize the setup. I’m hoping that in a future iOS release Apple will add a Contact slider like it has for Calendar sync in the Gmail account type properties.
- Windows Phone 8: who uses this?, but seriously, I don’t know… yet. If I had to guess, I’d say the cleanest solution would be for Microsoft to start supporting CardDAV and CalDAV in addition to IMAP in their mobile mail application. At least then, Windows Phone users would have a “supported” configuration. I’m keeping an eye out for what Redmond decides to do other than Twitter blast the Google PR execs.
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