YouTube upgrades its mobile site

All smartphone users treated to a more full, clean YouTube experience

If you own a smartphone with a nifty mobile browser, you’ll be glad to hear that the mobile version of the most popular online video site has been upgraded to provide “the best possible experience,” YouTube quietly announced through a blog post yesterday.

According to Product Manager Dwipal Desai, the upgrade provides new functionality for users whose smartphones have “capable browsers.” These include the Apple iPhone, the T-Mobile G1 (which runs Google’s Android mobile operating system), and the Palm Pre.

Surfing to www.youtube.com (which automatically redirects to www.m.youtube.com) on my iPhone, loads up a clean-looking home page, with popular and recommended videos listed plainly with a preview image, title, rating, length, and view count. Users can search for videos by keyword or opt to browse by most of the same options that one can through the full YouTube site. Finally, users can actually access their YouTube account right through the mobile site to look over video stats, view favorites, or check out subscriptions.

Though this may not replace the default YouTube app on the iPhone anytime soon, the mobile site certainly looks like it can hold its own, no matter what smartphone it's running it.

Users should expect increased expansion and development of the mobile version of the site over the next few months, since with the release of popular smartphones with solid video recording and upload capabilities, like the iPhone 3G S, this year is increasingly looking like the year that mobile video got huge.

The mobile update does, however, arrive later than expected, considering that it has been well over a month since YouTube first revealed through its blog that the site had tracked a 1700% increase in mobile uploads since the beginning of 2009.

Better late than never, right?