Switching to the iPhone 4? Here's how to set up contacts and email

With the launch of the Verizon iPhone 4 many will have to face the good and bad of iOS for the first time. And while we think iOS is a pretty robust platform, it still has a slight learning curve. The first and main hub for your iPhone needs is iTunes. The application will be your intermediary for syncing everything to your iPhone and you'd better like it because you will have to use it unless you go with a jailbreak of course.

Managing contacts

The first thing you might want to do when getting the Verizon iPhone 4 is to transfer all of your contacts. Importing contacts on the iPhone is all about getting them to the cloud first. If you were using Android, you most probably use Google services such as Gmail and in this case your best option would be to import all of your contacts from the popular mail service. To do this, you would have to set up your Gmail as an Exchange account. You can do this from Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Microsoft Exchange. Below you can find a step-by-step walkthrough.

In case you have a BlackBerry the process is very similar as the easiest option would be to export your existing contacts to Google first. Google's mobile sync application would be your app of choice as it syncs both your calendars and contacts for a seamless export to the cloud. To import them on the iPhone, you just have to follow the steps described above.

Exporting your contacts from the iPhone is also an easy process – just launch iTunes, connect your iPhone and select it in iTunes. In the Info tab you will find the option to sync your address book contacts to Google Contacts among others.



Setting up your email, Exchange account

With the iPhone's launch back in 2007, email security was one of the main reasons to hold back on using Apple's handset for business. Fast forward to 2011 and mail support is now much better with a unified inbox for all your email accounts and strengthened security.

If you switch from Android you might find an equally rich Gmail client missing on iOS. The one on Android mimics the desktop version almost to a full extent with threaded conversations and starred emails among many other options. The iPhone doesn't have an app that rich, but nevertheless its mail client is also pretty functional with threads as of iOS 4.0 and there is always the Gmail web interface, which you can use from Safari.

Setting up your email is probably the second most important thing you will do after you sync up your contacts. To do that you have to navigate to Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendar → Add Account... From there you can select an email provider and if you are using a popular mail service like Gmail or Yahoo the only thing left is entering your credentials. If you want to set up your corporate email, you have to navigate to Other From t→ Add Mail Account where  you have to type in your credentials along with incoming and outgoing mail settings.

As we mentioned, the iPhone now supports unified inbox for all of your email accounts, including multiple Exchange accounts. Switching between inboxes has been given a facelift and is much quicker in the latest versions of iOS. Apple's handset has secure messaging covered as well with support for SSL. 

Synchronizing calendars

Finally, the iPhone 4 also supports different standard-based services such as the IMAP mail protocol, LDAP directory and CalDAV calendars. When you set up your email as an Exchange account as we showed earlier, you can choose to sync not only your contacts and email, but calendar as well. If you use more than one calendar, you might want to take a look at Google's mobile sync page. From there you can sync your additional calendars, so they show up in the iPhone's native calendar app.

Verizon's iPhone 4 is an opportunity for many people to peek into the iOS world on their favorite carrier. It is not only a great media device, but with with all the ease of importing your Android or BlackBerry experience, it is an equally capable business tool.