In the run up to Google I/O 2014 in a few days, we’ve seen several core Google Apps on Android receive significant updates. From Hangouts to Maps to that dialer, they all have a fresh coat of paint and some new features both visible and under the hood. One app that has not gotten much love since it was updated last year to include a new icon different from the traditional one that featured the service logo is YouTube. Now it is getting some much need feature: the ability to pick the resolution/quality you want to stream your video in, just like you do on the web.
For reasons we can’t understand, we’ve been limited to just two options when streaming YouTube videos on our mobile devices: high quality (HD) and not-so high quality (non-HD). Well that has left many of us either burning away our mobile data streaming in high definition since most of the time you just find yourself catching up with the latest when you’re outside the range of your reliable office or home hotspot and you obviously don’t want to compromise on the quality. For those of us who’ve suffered (phandroids only, iOS has had this for a while), the dark days are over. Just like on the web version of YouTube, you’ll be able to choose your stream quality from either 144p, 240p, 320p or 720p. For some reason there’s no 1080p even though almost every flagship of note today is full HD and some have already made the jump to even higher resolutions but hey, we’re not complaining! Probably we’ll see full HD come out sometime in the future.
The update is yet to hit the Play Store for many of us and it will be a while before it is available to everyone. However if you can’t wait for this to be pushed to you, hit the source link below and stream away! Word of advice: using 144p to stream Kookoo will make those beautiful ladies look like 18th century octogenarians.
Via: XDA
