Where does the Gmail data reside?

[VandalDuck]

A basic Gmail account has 7GB of space. Let's say that I consume 1GB of my space...that's WAY more than the 228MB of free space on my phone.

When Gmail sync occurs, does the data actually reside on the phone, or is it just a mirror to the Gmail system?

Thanks for any insight you can give me!

 

[Dragoro]

I imagine it probably either hangs in googles cloud or goes onto your sd card.

 

[FrogSplatter]

A basic Gmail account has 7GB of space. Let's say that I consume 1GB of my space...that's WAY more than the 228MB of free space on my phone.

When Gmail sync occurs, does the data actually reside on the phone, or is it just a mirror to the Gmail system?

Thanks for any insight you can give me!

Actually all it does is push the "TEXT" portion of the email to you. In order to get the attachments/embedded pictures you would still have be online to download it and save to SD card.

 

[28064212]

The data is stored on your sdcard, since it's accessible offline. As FrogSplatter said, it only downloads the text, not attachments. The other reason it won't take up much space is because it only downloads a subset of your mail. If you go to the Gmail app, then -> Settings -> Labels, by default (on my Spica anyway) it's only set up to sync Inbox and Sent from the last 4 days. I don't know what would happen if you turn that up to something that did have to download more data than you have space for, but without attachments, you would have to have a huge amount of emails in a short space of time to even get as high as 10MB, never mind 228MB

 

[VandalDuck]

Thanks for the info. I imagined that there was no way they would design it to chew up your devices memory...but had to ask.

28064212 - you brought up the Number of Days to Sync option. I have mine set to 15 and I have more than 15 days of emails appearing to sync in my labels...and inbox. I have begun to question of this option is even working properly...and actually was the reason for my original question.

Anyway...thanks for the replies!

 

[28064212]

Hmm, my Number of Days selection seems to be working fine atm, but I only recently changed that up to 30, so maybe the older ones will stay. You haven't set some of the individual label options to "sync all" by any chance?

 

[VandalDuck]

I have every label set to sync using the number of days to sync option. I have mine set to 15 days currently.

If you change yours from 30 to something like 10, then go to your inbox and refresh, if it's like mine, it will work and only show emails from the last 10 days, but then if you go change to a different label, then come back to the inbox, it seems to "reset" and shows all emails regardless of the number of days to sync option setting.

 

[srothkin]

I asked Motorola this question before I bought the Droid. Email (at least in the default Gmail app) that is synced to the Droid is stored in main memory (the 256MB that is shared with applications). Currently they do not have an option to store email on the SDCard and they wouldn't say if/when that option might become available.

Their recommendation was to use the number of days to sync setting (already mentioned above) to manage how much data is synced to the phone.

It does appear that attachments are NOT synchronized -- it goes to the gmail server when you tap the preview button.

Also, you CAN access email that isn't synced to the phone. When you try to scroll to any message summary beyond what is already stored on the phone, it will briefly display a message that it is getting the additional information. After that you can view those emails (it seems to directly load them as needed from the server without actually storing them with the synchronized messages). The way it works seems fairly smooth and intuitive -- I have to complement google on that.

 

[VandalDuck]

Thanks for the post srothkin. After I read it, I went and checked and yes...all of my messages that are older than the "Number of Days to Sync" option do not appear immediately, they have to "Load".

They must be cached temporarily and then when you close the Gmail app, the cache is removed.

So much to learn about this OS....Google seems to do a great job in handling things. I just wish the hardware would give you more on board memory. Coming from the world of Blackberry...I am very used to having to check my available memory daily...so it is a tough habit for me to break.