I’ve had my iPhone for months now and, until about two weeks ago, I was secretly unhappy with how it handled my email. You see, I get lots of email. Lots and lots, as a matter of fact, and it comes into twelve different accounts. I used to use Apple’s Mail to manage it on my MacBook, and all was good. But when I got my iPhone, I discovered that the phone’s lack of spam-filtering power made it literally unusable for my deluge of email.

Mail always sorted my mail invisibly, and its built-in spam filter kept the junk out of my Inbox. I use IMAP mail services, which means that all of my mail stays on the server, so I can access it from my MacBook, someone else’s computer via webmail or, I thought, my iPhone. But when I synced the accounts to the phone, the Inbox filled with spam so quickly that my actual email was lost in the mix.

It has taken me a while, but I’ve worked out a solution that leverages several great pieces of technology to make Mail on the iPhone work the way it should. Click onward to learn how I did it.

The truth is that this is pretty easy. All I’ve done is send all of my personal email to a secret Gmail account that nobody knows about. Then I connect to Gmail from the phone and Gmail’s powerful server-side filters keep the junk out. The only hang-up is that when I send people mail, I want them to receive it from my personal account, not my Gmail… but there’s a fix for that, too.

Step one is to get a Gmail account. Even if you already have one, go ahead and send yourself an invitation for another one and give it a crazy log-in that nobody will ever know. Once the new account is created, tell your other email account to auto-forward all of your mail to your secret Gmail account. This means that any mail sent to your personal account will show up in your new Gmail account.

The next step is to fix things on Gmail’s end so that when you send people mail, it looks like its coming from your personal account and not your secret Gmail identity. You can do that from within the Gmail interface in your web browser. Click on the Settings link in the upper-right corner of the Gmail interface (next to your secret name) then click on the Accounts tab. The first option says “Send mail as:” and there’s a link there to add another email address. Click it.

n the resulting pop-up, add your personal account and then check it. Google will have sent you a verification email with a link in it to click to prove that you can access that account. Once you do that, head back to the Settings screen and click the link to make your new “Send As” address the default.

Whew! Once that’s finished, you can add the Gmail account to your iPhone. One caveat: DO NOT use the iPhone’s built-in Gmail account tool when you add the account. Instead, set the account up as an Other account, then click the IMAP tab and use the following values:

IMAP Account Information
Name: What you want your name to appear as when you send
Address: Your personal email address (not the secret Gmail address)
Description: Whatever you want

Incoming Mail Server
Host Name: imap.gmail.com
User Name: Your secret Gmail login (without the @gmail.com part)
Password: Duh.

Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP)
Host Name: smtp.gmail.com
User Name: Your secret Gmail login (without the @gmail.com part)
Password: Duh.

You can look at the Advanced settings, but you shouldn’t have to touch them unless you want to. When you’re done, you should be all set up. Now when someone sends an email to your personal account it will show up on your phone via Gmail, but when you respond it will look like your response came from your original account, not your Gmail. If you like, you can even add the account to Mail on your Mac.