Well, it is sure looking promising! After installing it on my Nokia n85 and starting it, it took just 1 second to load and display on line content. This is how the main program looks like on my device:
You can search for any videos you’d like and you can also look at related videos, just as in the YouTube web version:
And here comes the big surprise. When you select a movie, the application uses its own implementation of video player, providing a supper fast loading and buffering time. It takes almost no time at all from the moment you select a movie until it starts playing. It also rotates the screen automatically with a nice spiral effect:
This is sure another great product Google is releasing for mobile devices, and a brilliant decision of them to leave J2ME aside and concentrate on the advantages Symbian platform has to offer.
Google are not dumping J2ME at all. I have Google’s YouTube J2ME application working for a year now on my 3 years old Sony Ericsson K800i. It has the same features you described!
Here is an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFx8JSG3E40
I’m not saying they are dumping J2ME for all their products (sorry if it wasn’t clear), but it is obvious that lately they are focusing on this platform (Google maps and latitude has special versions for it as well). The J2ME version of YouTube app has similar features, but the performance and UX difference is significant, a gap that J2ME development will have trouble to close.