YouTube on iPhone: Not (Yet) Meant To Be

Let me start this off by stating that I recognize the intention as good. Apple making strides to bridge its soon-to-be-released iPhone with the wealth of content YouTube providesis a no-brainer. All those video clips wrapped inside a luscious UI to take with you wherever you go? What could be better? (High-resvideo clips wrapped in a luscious UI, of course. I presume that’ll come with time.)

There’s a problem with iPhone-YouTube picture today, however, and it has to do with a hardware limitation for first-generation iPhone handsets. It’s something many of us routinely utilize without considering it a problem whatsoever.

The problem is EDGE. Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution in long. What it basically provides to a user is an average download speed faster than GPRS but still much slower than that available through the typical 3G connection. In short, EDGE isn’t terrible. It’s what most BlackBerry users today rely on to get their email pushed out to their pockets while away from their PCs. And it’s relatively speedy if the data transferred via the protocol travels the airwaves sans imagery. Not to mention reliable and very, very prevalent in the iPhone’s initial market space (the US).

But there’s simply no way EDGE will handle what iPhone users will expect it to handle when they make requests to download clips from YouTube’s servers.

Throw in a brawny buffer or even a full-load-before-playback feature and you’re still left with a sub-par experience. And as much as Apple can tout the WiFi radio embedded within the device, it’s only reasonable to assume most users will go without enabling the feature much of the time. It’s a nice bonus, absolutely, and if one is fortunate enough to come across open hotspot after open hotspot in locations one routinely visits, there’ll likely be no issues whatsoever when browsing and consuming YouTube-based video. But the main benefit to owning a mobile all-in-one device such as the iPhone is to enjoy its features anywhere. Anywhere you can cling to a reasonably strong cellular signal, that is.

The images floating about the Web showcasing the purported YouTube video interface for the iPhone are an impressive lot. Clearly, Apple will offer a considerably more refined product at the end-user side of the spectrum than what one gets today with a visit to YouTube.com via the average desktop Web browser. But video downloaded from YouTube to the iPhone will need to stream quickly and fluidly, and with EDGE as the middleman I just cannot imagine the terms “quickly” and “fluidly” escaping the mouths of owners of the device when describing their mobile video streaming experiences. Perhaps with the second generation of the iPhone, the mobile YouTube experience will be a pleasant one. But as of June 29th, iPhone customers will be disappointed if they expect to watch cats flush toilets without a technological hiccup while they themselves break for the loo.

Of course, feel free to imagine a scenario slightly less asinine than this if you wish. It’s only the first example that came to mind.