iPhone YouTube needs more awesome (lots more)

The iPhone comes with a YouTube player.  On the surface I think that’s pretty great.  It does allow searching and playing YouTube videos and emailing someone a link to a video.  The part I dislike is that that’s pretty much where the functionality ends.  It has no association with your account or other things that actually make YouTube awesome.

I’m really missing the ability to share a video or mark a video as a favorite or play through my play lists.  I would also like to see a change to all video applications on the iPhone that allow you to play video’s in portrait mode.  It seems podcast videos can do this but iTunes synced movies and YouTube can’t play in portrait mode which is a drag since I want to watch them in a cradle sometimes.

I think a refresh on the YouTube player is needed and adding the following features would make it amazing instead of just a token feature to say the iPhone has YouTube support.

• Store and login to my YouTube account
• View and play my YouTube Favorites
• View and play my YouTube play lists
• Add videos to my play lists
• Mark a video as a Favorite
• Allow comments / rating of videos

These initial changes would go a long way to improving the iPhone YouTube experience.  I’m hoping for an update in future releases.