Google Apps Email and Droid Phones

My dad bought a Motorola Droid, and has a custom domain email account hosted by Google Apps.  In order to activate the Droid, you must have a GMail account (much the same as you need an iTunes account to activate an iPhone).  Even though Google Apps email is hosted by GMail, a Google Apps email account can not be used to activate an Android phone—you will still need a GMail account.  The Verizon rep had to create a dummy account for my dad just to get the phone turned on.

I did send an email to Verizon’s tech support, and here was the reply:

An email hosted by Google apps for domain would not be able to take the place of a gmail account.

So there you have it, straight from Verizon (kudos to VZW tech support for the less than 18 hour answer via both email and a voice mail).  After your Android phone is activated, you can use the Mail program (or preferably K9 Mail) to use your Google Apps email.  IMAP seems to be the recommended method, since Android is mentioned specifically in the IMAP setup, but POP3 would apparently work, too.

Here are setup instructions for the two protocols.

IMAP: https://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=114408

POP3: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13287