I know a few people who have had Hotmail address for a long time and don’t want to change. They also have bought iPhones and now have no way to use the built-in client on the iPhone to read mail. This solutions lets them read Hotmail on their iPhone. (Actually, the same setup can apply for Apple Mail, too.) One catch here is that your Hotmail account must support Forwarding. You can see it is does under the Hotmail Options.

Basically these instructions help you set up forwarding in Hotmail so that incoming messages are forwarded from Hotmail to a Gmail account. This also sets up Gmail and the iPhone to make replies and new messages look like they come from Hotmail. When complete, you can read, reply, and send messages in Gmail and the iPhone as if you were on Hotmail.

 

With this solution in place:

Email people send to your Hotmail address will be visible on your iPhone in the built-in iPhone Mail software.
If you reply to a message on the iPhone or in Gmail, to your recipients it will look like it came from your Hotmail address.
You can still check mail using Hotmail on the web if you like.
You can also log into Gmail and see your Hotmail messages there.
An added bonus is that you will benefit from Gmail’s junk mail filter, which is excellent.
Since Gmail supports IMAP, the iPhone and the Gmail mailbox is synced nicely as you read, delete and filter messages.
Note: While you can still read email on the Hotmail website as you currently do, there is an advantage to reading your Hotmail in your new Gmail account. The iPhone and the Gmail account will be synced — so for example, Gmail and the iPhone will keep track of which messages you have read on either device. If you get a message and read it on the iPhone, when you check your Gmail account it will also show as read. Were you to check your mail on Hotmail.com, messages you have already read on the iPhone will show as new.

The same goes for deleting messages. If you delete a message on the Gmail site, these will be deleted from the iPhone, too. The same is true for filters. You can set up filters on the Gmail site, and this filtering will by synced to the iPhone. None of this is synced with the mail you see on Hotmail.com. So basically, if you implement this, you are better off just checking and reading your Hotmail messages in Gmail, but its up to you.

In addition to these steps, you may need to do work to bring your Hotmail address book to Gmail. Gmail has some instructions to help with that.

Start with Gmail. Create a new Gmail account. Note that you could use an existing Gmail account for this solution. This has some tradeoffs, one being that messages you send from the iPhone appear to come from that Gmail account instead of your existing Hotmail account. If you just want to keep your Hotmail account intact and use that as your main account, I think it’s better for to create a new Gmail account and just use that for handling Hotmail.

Under Settings, go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP » Enable IMAP. Save the changes. Under Settings and then Accounts, add another email address — add your existing Hotmail account.

Now go to Hotmail. In your inbox, there should be a message from Gmail; you need to click on a link in that message. Next go to Options and set up forwarding to your new Gmail account. It’s up to you whether messages are retained in Hotmail. (If you don’t have an option for forwarding, you may be out of luck. Perhaps others have advice on how to get Hotmail to allow this.)

Back to Gmail: There should be a message from Hotmail; you need to click on a link in that message. Now back into Gmail settings, under Accounts, you should see your Hotmail email address listed. Click on the link that says Make Default. From here on, you can use Gmail as your way to check Hotmail. You actually do not need to login to Hotmail any more to read mail, you can use your Gmail account as the web-based way to check Hotmail.

Now how to access from iPhone: On the iPhone, go to Settings and then Mail. Delete any previous attempts you’ve made to make a Hotmail account — these can cause problems with the new account you create. Create a new email account by clicking Add Account. On the next screen, choose Other (don’t pick Gmail). Here are the settings:

Name: Your Name
Address: Your current hotmail.com email address
Description: (can be anything) “hotmail”
Incoming Mail Server:
HostName: imap.gmail.com
UserName: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Password: the password for this gmail account
Outgoing Mail Server: smtp.gmail.com
UserName: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Password: the password for this gmail account
All other settings should match the defaults.
Send yourself a test message to your Hotmail account from another account. Give it a few minutes, and it should then show on your iPhone.

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