I don't have an Apple device, but I'd like to try iCloud Mail on my PC. Can I create an iCloud account on my friend's iPhone, then sign out on his device and use the account on iCloud.com? If so, doesn't it erase his iPhone data or cause any problem whatsoever?
IOS – Create an iCloud account on the friend’s iPhone
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Related Solutions
You can use Google Chrome for iOS to go to https://www.icloud.com/ and force it to show you the desktop version, by clicking on the "Request Desktop Site" menu option. Then you get the login form, and you can login as usual.
You can setup your iCloud account to send using the Gmail SMTP server.
Setting => Mail, Contacts, Calendar => iCloud => Account => Advanced (Mail) => Outgoing mail server (SMTP) => Other SMTP Serveres => Add Server here you can set up the Gmail SMTP server: smtp.gmail.com - remember to choose the Gmail server, and de-activate the iCloud SMTP server afterwards.
The mails sent will however appear in iCloud's sent folder.
The iCloud sender email address will however still be the iCloud address. If you use the build in Mail.app, you can manually choose your Gmail address (and the mail will appear in Gmail's sent folder), but how you can use this one, the way you want to use it - I don't know.
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Best Answer
If all you need to know is whether it will erase your friend's iPhone data, the answer is no.
What your friend will need to do is sign out of their iCloud account via Settings > iCloud.
After signing out, what happens depends to some degree on what version of iOS your friend has installed, whether they have other Apple devices, etc. However, the worst case scenario is that when they sign back into their iCloud account all their iCloud data will sync back to their device with the exception of any photo stream photos older than 30 days. (Of course, if you're only going to use it for a very brief period to create the account, and then sign out of it, this won't be an issue as they'd be signing back in not long after signing out).
However, I do strongly recommend that your friend does a manual backup of their device to iTunes (on their computer) first. This is just an extra precaution in case something unexpected happens.
Also, your friend may get some emails from Apple (e.g. about Find My iPhone being disabled, etc).