Google's free email service, Gmail, is quite popular. If you're a long time Gmail user you'll recall that Google wanted to reinvent email by giving folks what seemed like unlimited space for their email accounts. All that space meant you would never need to delete an email message again. In fact, at the beginning there was no easy way to delete an email from your Gmail account, the only thing you could do is Archive messages (which removed them from your inbox, but they would still show up in searches and the like).
Gmail users who updated their iPhones, and iPod touches, to the latest version of the iPhone operating system (called iOS now) might be experiencing a little dejavu. By default you can't delete messages from your Gmail account on your iPhone/iPod touch running iOS 4. Luckily, you can revert back to the old deleting behaviour pretty easily.
iOS Gmail default
Here you can see my Gmail account with the iOS 4 default setting. Swiping an email message reveals an 'Archive' button (which used to be a delete button). As Jacqui at Ars points out in her great iOS 4 review you can move an email message to the Trash folder manually... but that is far too many steps.
Launch the Settings app
To turn off message archiving just tap on the Sattings app and select "Mail, Contacts, Calendars." This will list all the email account you have on your iPhone under the 'Account' section. Tap on your Gmail account.
Turn off Archive Messages
This is what your Gmail account settings should look like (roughly). Tap on the On/Off switch next to "Archive Messages." Now you can delete emails like a mad man.
Deleting like the good old days
And there is the familiar Delete button we know and love. If you decide you rather liked Archiving messages just pop back into your Gmail settings on your iPhone and toggle "Archive Messages" to On.
