How to Watch HD YouTube Videos over 3G on iPhone

If you’ve attempted to watched videos on the YouTube app over the 3G network, you will have noticed the quality is absolutely atrocious. There were ways to circumvent this by installing 3G “tweaks” via jailbreaking your iPhone, but for there are now easier alternatives.

Back in the first week of July, YouTube updated the mobile version of their website. This new web version had more features and loaded much faster than the native iPhone YouTube app.

The biggest feature was that high quality viewing of YouTube videos was now possible over 3G! Say good-bye to the native iPhone YouTube app. It desperately requires an update to keep up with this awesome HTML5 powered YouTube web app.

How to Watch HD YouTube Videos over 3G on your iPhone/iPod Touch

Many of you are already aware of how to do this. However, lots of people out there (new iPhone users) don’t have a clue about this at all. So if you are in the latter group, read on!

1. Visit http://m.youtube.com in Safari on your iPhone/iPod Touch.
2. Tap “HQ” and watch videos in high quality over 3G. Enjoy!
3. Add the YouTube mobile site to your homescreen. Tap the “+” in Safari.

4. A high quality bookmark image will now look nice and pretty on your homescreen.

The problem with the native iPhone YouTube app is that it’s still streaming videos using a format designed for EDGE, according to YouTube product manager, Andrey Doronichev. Until Apple updates the iPhone YouTube app, I will continue to watch high quality videos with the YouTube mobile site.

I wanted to watch a Will Ferrell interview on YouTube. This is the quality from the native YouTube app on the iPhone:

Now, take a look at the exact same video, on the YouTube mobile site (make sure HQ is enabled):

The differences are like night and day. Kudos to the YouTube team at Google for keeping us up to date with all of this stuff!

How are you liking videos on the YouTube mobile web app?

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