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I want the ability to send an email to an iOS users iPad's POP account and have them instantly recieve a notification.

For example, on my Android devices, since gmail is built into the system, if anyone emails my gmail address, I get a notification about 1 second after they hit send on their end. If its a pop account, then I have to wait until the next pull, every 15, 30, etc minutes (whatever the user has it set to).

Can iOS receive the gmail type instant notifications? And if so, how does the email account or notifications settings need to be set up?

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I'm not totally clear on what you're asking. Do you want push email on iOS for POP or a gmail account? It's pretty easy to accomplish with Gmail, but I would think not possible with POP. –  Chris Herbert Nov 7 '12 at 0:45

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You cannot have Push notifications for a POP3 email account. The only supported mail accounts for push email notifications are iCloud/MobileMe and Exchange with ActiveSync support.

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Thanks, using exchange accounts seem to be the winner for my needs. –  KickingLettuce Nov 7 '12 at 22:49

On the iPhone if you go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data you should see the option to turn Push on. It's not always perfect and not all protocols support it so there's another section below it called Fetch. When Push can't work Fetch will retrieve data at the intervals you set which are Every 15 minutes, Every 30 minutes, Hourly, or Manually (meaning only when you open the email client and/or tell the client to sync).

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If the iOS user has a Gmail account, it can be set up with instant push notifications. There are simple instructions on the Google website about setting your Gmail account up as an Exchange account.

I recently swapped from iPhone to Android and have been surprised how poorly push works on Android compared to iOS.

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