If you’re not rocking the new BlackBerry Z10 but an older ‘Berry, then chances are you’re experiencing problems with YouTube on your phone. Those with older models running BlackBerry OS 7 and 7.1 are reporting that videos will no longer play through the official YouTube app.
The app works fine when searching for videos, but when selecting one to play nothing will happen. The same problem happened with Microsoft’s Windows Phone not so long ago, so it begs the question; has Google made a change without notifying BlackBerry properly, or is this just a glitch?
It seems that the issue is isolated to BlackBerry devices running OS 7 or 7.1 only, with older models rocking 5.0 and 6.0 working fine – we’ve tested several models here and confirmed the problem on our Bold 9900.
Thankfully there are ways around the problem, although to do so is of course a pain. However, you can download the Opera browser as an app from BlackBerry World and access the YouTube site with no problems through that. On the downside the playback quality is a little lower than through the YouTube app.
To keep the same quality you’ll have to do a little more work. Find a video you want to watch through the YouTube app, press the BlackBerry button on your keyboard and select ‘Send Page Address’. Share it via email and send the link to yourself, then you should be able to watch the email through the email app on your BlackBerry.
Neither Google nor BlackBerry has currently acknowledged the issue, but hopefully a proper fix will be issued very soon.
UPDATE: As CrackBerry reports, the issue has now been fixed. Those using ‘Berrys with OS 7 and 7.1 should now be able to watch videos through the official YouTube app with no problems.