The XPERIA panels is one of the key selling points of the X1, and it’s one of the features I love the most about my X1. The panels make it easier for me to do tasks on my phone, and especially the Facebook  and YouTube panels are cool, if you’re into that kind of stuff. In this post I’ll talk about the YouTube panel, which – when it comes down to it – is hardly a panel.

In order to get things moving, you’ll need an X1 (obviously), the YouTube application for your device (originally for the HTC Touch HD) and of course the YouTube panel itself. You can find the YouTube application for the X1 right here, and the panel is available here. Install the application first, and the panel after that. You might also need to run this installation file, if the panel is not working. If you’re using a non-English X1, you’ll have to check the comments below for a work-around.

OK – now you’re ready to watch YouTube videos on your X1! You will of course have to activate the panel from the panel settings menu, but assuming you’ve already taken care of that, I’ll move right along and start talking about the application / panel.

The panel itself is a pretty simple HTML-based panel that opens a specified application – in this case it’s the YouTube application, you’ve just installed. If you uninstall the YouTube application, the panel will not work and will display nothing more than a blank page.

Activating the panel, you’ll be presented with a list of 25 popular videos, each displayed with a thumbnail and a link on the right for more information about the video. By swiping your finger across the screen vertically, you will browse the list of videos. Once you reach the bottom of the list, you’ll have the option to expand the list with yet another 25 popular videos. The content of the list can naturally be changed, but the default view is featured videos.

At the bottom of the application, you’ll have four buttons.

• The first button represents the video list overview mentioned above.
• The second button takes you to a list of your bookmarked videos using the application.
• The third button is the history button, and takes you to history list of which videos you’ve watched.
• The fourth and final button is the search button, which allows you to search for videos based on your search keywords. So far, I have not found any limitations in the search results, and believe the application is capable of playing all the video files on YouTube.

You can also bring up the program guide at any given point in time. It’s located at the top of the application. You can think of this as a way of subscribing to video channels. This way you’ll always have easy access to the latest videos from the video channels you’ve added to your program guide.

In the picture above I’ve performed a search and pressed the link for more information about the video in one of the search results. This brings up a larger thumbnail of the video, an excerpt, and various other details about the video. In addition to this, it also gives you the option to send the video to a friend, bookmarkk it or add the video channel to your program guide. The application will also present three related videos as well as three other videos from the video channel.

Watching videos using the application is really nice. It really makes use of the large high resolution display on the X1, and you can set your preferred video quality in the settings to really max out the experience.

By tapping on the screen during video playback, you’ll bring up an on-screen player menu. With this you can navigate to a certain point in the video; rewind; pause/play; stop; or go full-screen again.

I think this is a really neat application, and it’s something I use a lot on my X1. It looks good, it’s easy to use and it just works like magic! A small note of caution though, as this application / panel eats up a lot of data. We can only recommend using this application / panel if you’re connected to a WLAN network or you’ve got a flatrate contract with unlimited data usage included.

Also – kudos to the developers / porters of this application. It’s a mighty fine piece of work!