workaround to get gmail to push to apple mail app

so i mainly use gmail, but i have a few other email accounts.  i want to stay using the apple email app on my iphone 5/ipad 4, which are both running iOS 6.1.3.  i thought i figured it out.  in iOS 6.1.3, you can change the default outgoing smtp server again (finally).  so i just setup gmail to forward to my me/icloud email address, disabled the icloud outgoing server, and it seems to be working fine.  the emails are being sent and it shows them as being sent from gmail.  however, if i read an email on my iphone, which was forwarded to my me/icloud account thru the apple email app on my iphone, it still shows as unread on the ipad.  or if i read it on the ipad it shows as unread on the iphone.  this is very annoying, since the gmails are being forwarded to my me/icloud account, why are they not syncing as read between devices?  is this because i have the outgoing icloud server turned off? 

another thing i have noticed, is that the ipad sends emails instantly, it is using port 587.  the iphone is using port 465 and is much slower to send emails.  any ideas why?