A dedicated YouTube client has been missing for the symbian platform since long. With Google concentrating more on their Android and iPhone markets for most of its mobile applications. Anyway as they say better late than never, Google has finally released their YouTube client for the symbian platform . While its not as feature packed as I was expecting, it provides basic YouTube features in a fairly well designed client.

Installation

While I have been checking with the google mobile website regularly but in vain, Mobicreed have somehow sourced a setup file for youtube client for the symbian platform, which can be downloaded from here. On installation, during the initial set-up process, the client asked for the region which had only few countries in the list (US, UK, Australia, Ireland and a few more). I just selected US and continued with the configuration and till now the client is working great.

Home screen

Features

As I mentioned before, this client brings basic youtube functions to our 5800s. As can be seen from the screenshot of the home screen, users can browse around Top rated, Most viewed and Most recent videos from the homescreen. Browsing through videos is fairly easy with the client bringing iTunes coverflow like navigation to our 5800s (Please check the gallery below for screenshots). Video streaming is faster and smoother than from in the default symbian browser. I streamed Randy Pausch's convocation address to the graduating class of Carnegie Mellon  and the stream was continuous and fluid over wi-fi. Fast streaming is something I was looking for in this client and am pretty much satisfied with what it offers. Check the gallery below for some screenshots taken during streaming this video.

Pros

1. Fairly well designed client for finger touch browsing
2. iTunes like cover flow browsing is cool
3. Fast streaming
4. Related videos and search video options are helpful

Cons

1. No option for signing in with our youtube accounts
2. No option for uploading videos directly from the client
3. The soft buttons to the right of the screen hog 15 to 20% of the precious screen real estate

Verdict

As nuch I am glad to have a youtube client on my 5800, I am not very much impressed with the feature set it offers. It does provide faster streaming and cover flow like navigation but some of the key features like uploading videos and connecting to youtube accounts have been overlooked. I am waiting for a youtube client, which can let me upload videos directly from my 5800. Till then I have to be content with just faster streaming of youtube videos on my 5800.

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