It's amazing to me that smartphones sold today cannot play YouTube (and other) videos and multimedia files. Why in the world should I be limited? (I think the claim is that YouTube and other videos are heavy consumers of bandwidth, so the providers don't like to make it easy.) Here is what I found to make Windows Mobile 6 work.
It's clear that this has been a problem for a while. A search for "windows mobile YouTube" turns up all sorts of discussion and questions about the issue. My favorite source of info on my phone the xda-developers forum has many threads on the topic.
The basic solution: install software that can play the videos because the vendors / Microsoft can't be bothered to make this work out of the box. There are several options, but this one seems to be most common (and free):
- Download The Core Pocket Media Player (TCPMP) and the Flash Video Bundle (available in many other places too).
- Copy the CAB's to your phone with ActiveSync (or some other mechanism). The standard process puts them into your phone's My Documents folder.
- Install them (by selecting from the File Explorer). Both should be installed in the same location.
- Then restart your phone, and enjoy your viewing experience.
When you click on a video to view it, you will be presented with a menu to Play or Save the video or go to the page in YouTube. Playing the video will open TCPMP and run the video.
Thanks to the half dozen sites I visited to confirm and make sure I was getting the most up-to-date versions of these file. For more detail and discussion, I recommend the xda-developers thread on the Flash Video Bundle. It's also discussed at several other mobile phone forums.