YouTube Android app gets a spit and polish

The YouTube Android app has been given a significant makeover this week, with Google offering up a slathering of new changes to the service.

The update also marks a significant change for the application as it is now available on the Android Market and not just bundled with devices.

Google has announced that its app has been built from the ground up and is said to mirror the desktop experience of YouTube.

Unbundled release

"Following our famous mantra 'launch early, iterate often', we first released an early version of the unbundled app a few of weeks ago, collected user feedback, and addressed the key user requests in version 2.1," said Google on its blog.

The app only works for Android 2.2 and above and will be pre-installed on the Nexus S.

The new features of the app are listed below:

• In-page playback: you can read the video description, browse related, rate or flag videos without having to interrupt video playback.


• Posting comments: you can post a comment while the video is playing


• Subscription updates: Easier to access new videos from your subscriptions.


• New full-screen UI: To enter full-screen mode, you just have to rotate the phone.