I just set up my iPhone's mail app to connect to my mail server - I've added accounts in both imap and pop3 flavors.

I used imap for email for many years, probably from 1990 to at least 1996 or so, then I switched over to using pop3 and have since always used that with every new desktop mail client.

While using a desktop pop3 client I've always maintained settings that would, at least for a short while, leave the mail on the server, enabling me to use an imap-based webmail client every now and then. This has been the extent of accessing my email from multiple clients for the past 10 years.

With the iPhone I'd like to continue to receive mail on the desktop as it'll be where I do the bulk of my work and therefore replies.

Does the iPhone's mail app archive/cache or otherwise store the contents of messages it has read using imap? I'd like to still be able to review messages that I've previously read if for some reason I lose my internet connection.

With the imap account, when I delete a message I'm currently getting an error that it couldn't put the message into the trash folder.

Will iTunes sync SENT MAIL from the iPhone back to my desktop client if I'm using pop3 on the desktop? I really don't want to switch over to imap on the desktop as I keep a large archive of mail locally.

How do other people have mail set up on their iOS devices and how has it been working out for you?

Currently, I'm not getting any PUSH/notifications functionality with my imap account, so that's something else I have to look into (servers @ Dreamhost)