Handful of Nothing

So you tube released a mobile web site. Looks pretty simple and works quite nice, more then I expected. But of course I found a little bit of problems while using it.

Follow with me, and tell me if it’s not a little bit confusing :

I started my web browser. Tried my GPRS service (Claro) and it didn’t worked. Claro sucks here in Recife. Not a problem, The cellphone have Wifi and we have wifi network available. What I do? Use the “search for wifi” in the access point dialog.

Then, I choose our network, enter the passphrase, and bam! start browsing. Full speed. But something was missing. I was really expecting to see a dialog asking me “Do you want to save this as an access point?”(like in Maemo) or even better do no ask me just create it at least for this session.

No. It didn’t happen, and I felt something was wrong, but ok maybe it’s just me. I kept browsing youtube, picked up a video and clicked “watch”. Real player opened, and even thought I’m connected he asks permission to connect to the network. Funny. Accept the request and got to the following message :
“No access point defined. Please define a default …”
What???? Ok ok ok. Let’s set the access point, click options, network, list access point…Not even a sign of the current connection I’m using. Damn!

Back to s60 main menu, open there’s a connectivity menu, I click on it, found a “Connection manager”. Nice should solve my problem. Active connection list my connection! Wait… there’s no way to save as an access point. Oh my god.

Click the menu key, now I will try the “settings” options. Enter the connection section, create an access point, define that I want to use lan and then… oh no… I need to enter the enormous password again. God damn it! I’m connected to the network!!! Ok, no problem I’m using a e61 full keyboard should not be a problem to type my 24 characters phrase. I enter the password, save the access point, close the settings, hold the menu key to go back to real player (thank you for multi tasking) and set the default access point.

Nice! Everything should work now! Press and hold menu key again, back to browser click on watch, authorize real player to connect and BAM! Youtube on my mobile! Finally.

Now please think with me :
Does it need to be so complicated? I’m all about giving user power to define for example a specific access point for such a service, but why not allow me to use my WIFI connection? There’s no charge on that! why to bother?

I see no reason to make the user experience so complicated. Of course there may be some obscure use case specification that forces that to happen but I believe there should be a much more simple way to do it, without compromising the power users.

Veredict
You tube rocks hard on the E61, the video quality is nice, compared to the web version, and it has a good audio. I just suffered a little bit with Real settings, but I hight recommend a S60 device to use with youtube mobile. Need to check a little bit more in other brands…