Google is finally offering IMAP access for users of its free email service and, as an added bonus, has made IMAP available for your iPhone. On Tuesday Google offered instructions for enabling IMAP access on their accounts, allowing users to organize email into folders, save drafts, and access sent mail from multiple clients.

IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) enables users to sync their own email client up with a Linux hosting server, rather than simply downloading and deleting the messages as is standard procedure using the alternative POP3 option. This allows users to keep record of all previous emails, both ingoing and outgoing, regardless of the location at which they login to the server.

The great news is that Gmail’s new IMAP option works out of the box with the iPhone, on both regular and hosted accounts. Instead of the somewhat frustrating implementation offered before, where the iPhone would continually grab more and more old mail from the POP server as fast as you could delete it, the IMAP version reflects your Gmail labels as directories, and if you read something on your mobile, it is marked as unread on your main account.

To configure IMAP for your iPhone, just go to Gmail Help and follow the directions.