Google Sync for iOS, Windows Phone now supports true message deletion

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One of the big complaints that users of Gmail on iOS and Windows Phone have long had is that there has never been a way to truly delete a message when accessing Gmail as if it was an Exchange account. Gmail over Exchange is popular because it offers real-time push support, which is not available if you use IMAP^(INFO). Sure, you could press that delete button and the message would appear to go away, but what was really happening is that it was being sent to Gmail's archive folder.

It wasn't actually deleted at all.

That has now changed. Users of the Google Sync service for iOS devices now have a setting that will cause the app to delete messages for real - not just archive them. By default messages are still archived, but now users can point their Mobile Safari browser to Gmail.com's settings to opt to have messages sent into the void for real, instead of just being pushed to another folder where they can still be accessed at a later date.

As a result of this change, it is now possible to do the same thing with Windows Phone devices, though the setting is not accessible from the Windows Phone's Internet Explorer browser. You actually have to access your Gmail account with a Mobile Safari browser in order to change the required setting. An iPad or iPod touch would do the trick.

The required setting is called "Enable 'Delete Email as Trash' for this device," and is accessible from m.google.com/sync in Mobile Safari once the user has set up their Gmail account as an Exchange account in iOS or Windows Phone.