VLC For Android has been steadily improving over the past months, but today's beta update is a big step forward to the app that even the developers acknowledge as a "major release."

VLC went through a hardcore bootcamp between versions 1.3.2 and 1.5.0, emerging with enhancements all across the board. Internally, the app's code has been rewritten to be faster and to require fewer permissions especially on KitKat devices and above. Externally, the app's design has been given a small facelift to better fit Material's clean and elegant look. And functionally, VLC can now handle video playlists, auto-detect external USB devices, switch between audio and video, and more. Here's the full changelog:

WHAT'S NEW

VLC on Android 1.5.0 is a major release of VLC
We rewrote most of the VLC application internals to be faster for our next releases and to support video playlists and audio/video switches.
We've reduced the number of permissions needed, especially for KitKat (4.4) and more recent.
We've continued to clean the UI, to fit with Material look; but also to add a few new features, including USB auto-detection, better audio/video sync or better chapters support.
The best is yet to come!

VLC For Android 1.5.0 is only available to beta testers of the app, so you'll have to join the Google+ community and become a tester first to get access to it, otherwise the Play Store will only show you the stable 1.3.2 version.