OK. This thread might last a week or two.
Samsung Galaxy.
I read and replied to some Gmail messages today on my phone. Why aren’t the same messages on my PC Gmail account tonight? There’s no inbox or sent messages from today’s correspondence. Do they get deleted from my PC account somehow if I read them from my phone? makes no sense to me.
Thanks.
It’s possible. Both your phone and your computer are logging on to your email account in the same way and downloading messages. In the settings on your phone, there may be a setting something like “delete messages after downloading”. Turn that OFF on the phone.
(I have an iPhone. it does the same thing.)
My first guess would be the “challenge” issue. That is, whether the phone or the gmail account “wins” in terms of add/delete/etc.
Send me your phone, credit card, and any PINs you have and I’ll gladly fix it. 
Seriously, though, most likely you set up the phone in such a way that gmail is ignoring anything you’ve read on the phone. Also, they don’t always synch right away (at least not with my Blackberry).
I assume its a POP thing. I find a setting in Gmail under Forwarding and POP/IMAP ‘tab’ that gives options of several ways to treat the mail you access - such as ‘delete Gmail’s copy’, or ‘archive Gmail’s copy’, or ‘keep Gmail’s copy in inbox’, etc.
Perhaps you have it set to delete (or archive?) whenever POP is used? Just a WAG here, and plz do not go to any extremes until someone else verifies my info. I would guess that you have account set to delete any POP-accessed mails, but will loudly proclaim my wrongness if I am barking up your wrong tree here.
The area I am speaking about is found by opening Gmail and then going to the ‘Settings’ link at top/right of screen (by Sign Out and Help links), then to the ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab - around mid-screen is where the option of what to do with messages is found (on my account’s screens anyways).
HTH (!)
I’m on my phone now. The messages are gone from here too. But something weird happened tonight. My phone was recharging and wouldn’t power back up afterwards. I had to remove the freakin’ battery.
Stay tuned.
When you say “PC account”. Do you mean the webmail interface in your browser, or a classic email client like Outlook or Thunderbird?
Sounds like your phone has other problems anyway.
Heh. They sold you a BlackBerry in disguise!
I’m so sick of having to do battery pulls on the damned BlackBerry…
Go into Settings then Data Synchronisation. Check that Auto-sync and Google Mail are both selected ie the tick-boxes are green. This is push email ie when an email appears in your Gmail inbox, it is then pushed straightaway to your phone. Alternatively, make sure auto-sync is off, and you can manually sync by refreshing within the Gmail app.
ETA Obviously when you send a message from your phone if auto-sync is set it updates your main Gmail inbox straight away, or if not then when you refresh.
Thanks for all the help. I think I’m all synch’ed and ready to go now.
GSV Consolation of Dreams: I never said PC Account. It’s Gmail, and thus web mail.
A couple more things: I get no data service at, or within a few kilometers of work. That’s too bad because I’m blocked from so much here at work I occasionally wanted to check Gmail, YouTube, Facebook etc. However briefly, yesterday morning I did get a sudden window of data feed. I assume line of sight, foliage, time of day, etc. can affect the service. I do however get phone service, so I’m assuming the two are transmitted and received on separate bands. Oh, and the GPS service also seems independent of the other two, because sometimes it cuts out, while the other two are fine.
Wild and wacky stuff.
GPS on a mobile phone is a combination of two things - an actual GPS chip that uses the satellites up in orbit, and an “assist” style feature that uses the cellphone towers to help to narrow down where you are and improve the accuracy of the info from the pure GPS system (the cell towers know exactly where they are). If you are not in range of any towers the GPS will function, it just might take a little longer to get an accurate fix down to a few metres due to the way the GPS system works.
The cellular data vs phone is a little different - they both work through the same towers, but depending on the tower itself and your local surrounding, data may be affected. If the tower doesn’t have 3G hardware then you will be limited to EDGE or older data systems, assuming your phone supports it (most smartphones do), or your may be in an area where the signal is just too weak to support any data at all, but is ok for voice communication.
Your gmail issue could be down to POP vs IMAP. If you set up your phone to access your gmail account via IMAP then it will sync any messages you send or receive on the phone with the gmail server, so they will appear in your webmail view (they will also save state, so if you have already read it on your phone, it will appear as read in webmail view). If you are using POP on your phone, then no return communication happens, and you end up with two email clients with different information in each.
You don’t have to use webmail on a PC/Mac to access gmail - I have two gmail accounts and never log into them via webmail unless I’m on a remote machine and really need to use it and I don;t have my phone on me, other than initially setting them up. I use OS X’s built in Mail.app client to access them, using IMAP. My smartphone also accesses them this way, so what I do on one of them is always mirrored on the other - ie, it doesn’t matter what device I use to access my email, it’s always fully up to date.