20 August 2009

YouTube Application Gets An Update
And Full-screen Playback On Touch Devices

Google has rolled out a major update for its mobile YouTube client for S60 devices that further optimize touch experience to make it more finger friendly and brings the long-awaited playback in full screen mode on 5th edition devices, e.g, Nokia 5800, N97, 5300, Samsung OmniaHD.

YouTube Mobile Application allows you easily and quickly search and watch YouTube videos Nokia S60 phones wherever you are. Of course, S60’s web browser is good enough to browse both, mobile and desktop version of the YouTube, but a dedicated client simply offers easier manipulating and more rich experience.

Although it works fine overall there's a still plenty of room for improvements in usability and interface. Unfortunately it’s impossible to switch to High Quality mode and application is still limited to a passive viewing experience.

It doesn’t lets you "log in" and as a result, core YouTube features like rating, commenting, uploading and accessing to personal videos are still only available through the browser.

Bad video quality and annoying java limitations are a thing of the past with the launch of native Symbian application that brings improved, intuitive and easy to use user interface and what is even more important it offers better video quality and significantly improved viewing experiences.

Application combines the best of both worlds; it uses the MobiTubia like eye-candy and user friendly interface and the well known EmTube video quality, I just tested it on my oldie Nokia N95 and it simply rocks!

YouTube for mobile means having millions of videos right in your pocket, including most viewed, top rated, and the most recent videos. Last but not the least, there is an option to find the specific video you’re looking for by easily searching for it and to discover “Related” videos for each video you watch as well.

Once when you pick up category or get the search result you can browse through videos that are represented with the thumbnails and show basic information such as Title, Duration, rating, number of views and the description.

When you click on the video that you’re looking for, application will switch into player mode and change the screen orientation to landscape with the smooth and eye-candy transition animation. The player itself offers the basic commands, play, pause, forward, backward and the ability to change the volume.

However, the feature I miss the most is the ability to save downloaded or watched them offline and I truly hope they’ll implement this within the next release.

We need more that just bringing video to mobile phones, ability to upload rate, and comment on videos is a must and there is no excuse for not implementing this basic YouTube features in such a nice mobile application.

To download it just point your phone browser to
youtube.com and check out the latest changes today!