A smartphone is designed to help you keep in touch, and Android devices are no exception. Google’s mobile operating system gives you plenty of robust ways to stay connected. Here’s a tour to get you started.

Android offers options for using both Gmail accounts and non-Google e-mail accounts (POP, IMAP, or Exchange). We’ll begin with the former.

Read more after the break.

Trackback: ComputerWorld

When you first power up an Android phone, the initial setup process will help you configure a primary Gmail account to be associated with the device. That account will automatically appear in the integrated Gmail app, and you’ll always see mail appear there instantaneously as it arrives.

On phones running Android 2.0 or higher, you can add other synced Gmail accounts, as well. While in the Gmail app, press the phone’s Menu key, and then select Accounts. Touch the Add account button at the bottom of the screen, and follow the prompts. Once the setup is complete, you can toggle among your various Gmail accounts by pressing the Menu key while in the Gmail app, and selecting Accounts.

Want to customize how the phone will notify you of incoming messages? Tap the Menu key while viewing any account’s inbox, and select Settings. If you don’t want to be notified of new messages at all, uncheck the Email notifications box. If you want to receive only a visual notification–an alert in your notification panel and a flashing of your phone’s LED–set the ringtone to silent and make sure that the vibrate option is unchecked. You can set individual settings for each Gmail account on your phone: Just repeat these steps from any account’s inbox, and the changes will apply only to that particular Gmail address.

Don’t forget that your sent, deleted, and even spam messages are all synced by default, too. Press the Menu key and select the View labels option in Gmail to access all of your different mail folders.

Android’s Combined Inbox

In addition to the Gmail-specific application, Android provides a general e-mail app that can connect to multiple POP, IMAP, and Exchange accounts. Simply open the e-mail app (found in the main system app launcher) and then follow the prompts to add any e-mail account you wish.

You have the option of configuring multiple accounts within a single combined inbox. While inside the app, tap the Menu key and select Accounts. There, you’ll see a list of all of the e-mail accounts you’ve configured. You can tap on any account to open it individually, or you can tap on Combined Inbox to view messages from all of the accounts together. You can always add more accounts from this screen, too; just tap the Menu key again to find the Add account option.

Three more pages at ComputerWorld.