While you're technically correct I feel the need to add that Evolution is an excellent mail client.

I have never had the problem described by OP, but I have never connected Evolution to a Gmail account either.

Here, I suspect a user setup error involving Google always doing things a little differently, breaking specs, just because they can and to piss the rest of us off. And to hold on to their quasi-monopoly of course.

In other words, Evolution devs/maintainers have the choice of doing it properly for most email providers that follow the IMAP/SMTP specs, or doing it properly for Gmail.