I’m a big fan of Gmail but I wanted to set it up to use a non-Gmail address as standard, in case Google go bust (unlikely), evil (slightly less unlikely) or mess up their interface in an infuriating way (you never know). This is trivial within the web interface (go to Settings -> Accounts) but the iPhone mail client wouldn’t honour this setting. It kept sending mails via Gmail from my Gmail address, and gave me no way to override this.

Eventually I found this thread where the last poster ‘btnw’ explains how to do it. Essentially you just set the iPhone up manually to use Gmail as a generic IMAP/SMTP server, rather than using the Gmail quick setup option, and then for some reason it uses your default email address when sending mail. It’s important to follow Google’s iPhone setup instructions closely as there’s a few gotchas.

The poster on that thread said to:

Show your appreciation for this small piece of joy by being kind to someone else for no reason.

Consider this a random act of kindness :-)

Andrew.