Ingress APK Teardown [1.79.0]

Welcome back to another Ingress APK Teardown. This is another interesting version currently on a 1% roll-out to a Play Store near you. Like previous teardowns, we can peek into the APK and see what is coming. So lets take a look.

 

Meet the Ultra Link Amp

Just last version we saw the addition of the MUFG Capsule, and this version includes a new item known as the Ultra Link Amp.

This item is labelled as the following:

  • Enum: ULTRA_LINK_AMP
  • Human Readable: SoftBank Ultra Link
  • Description: blank

It appears Niantic was upset with us leaking details on previous unreleased items. Both the strings and code for this item are intentionally left blank. The true purpose and description of this Ultra Link Amp remain unknown. We do know that SoftBank is another Japanese company, which means two Japanese companies are sponsoring items.

(Audio clip of the item below)

(Image of the item below)

mod_detailed-ULTRA_LINK_AMP

This item, much like the MUFG Capsule is not currently hackable. Details on this item will probably be from Niantic when they are ready to release this item into the wild.

 


Artifact Clean-up

The APK prior to 1.79.0, held Helios, Recursion & Shonin Artifacts. 1.79.0 changed this by removing

  • amar (Recursion)
  • shonin (Shonin)
  • helios (Helios)

Artifacts from the APK. The only Artifact in the APK currently is the Lightman Shards. This might of just been an attempt to cleanup the APK as deleting all of these object files saved around 1.1mb of space.

 


Resonator Lines are Colored!

This version included a small visual tweak on the scanner. The resonators path back to their portal are now colored in the level resonator they are.

Screenshot_2015-06-15-17-37-36

 

This helps you quickly spot high level portals without having to manually view the portals. If you see that dark purple all around a portal, you have probably found a L8 portal.

 


 

Android Wearables

I’m almost done writing about this until it actually is live, but there were enough changes to warrant an update.

  • amNearbyPortalDistanceM (from 200 to 37)
  • amNoLongerNearbyDistanceM (from 100 to 40)
  • amSessionLengthMs (From 3600000 to 1800000)

Some terms in case you don’t know.

  • am = Active Mode  (Android Wearables feature)
  • M = meters
  • Ms = Milliseconds

We then saw the addition of some random wearable related files

  • common_open_on_phone.png
  • hand_held (res/values/arrays.xml)

Wearables continues to have code updates, but yet is still unreleased. Missions were in the APK for like 7 versions before being released. Wearables is way past 10 at this point. My next update on Wearables will be when it has been released.


 

Misc

  • Google Play Services updated internally to version 7.57.1000
  • The overlap issue on Regional Agent leaderboard has been fixed for large phone screens
  • New Language (en-rAU)
  • enableLocalLinkChecks (new handshake variable)
    • Appears to be a feature to limit the amount of server calls needed when linking portals.
    • This checks a local cache for blockers before pinging Ingress servers on whether the link can be made
    • This should prove to lower requests made to Niantic servers.

 

Conclusion

This version was built on June 9 and obtained on June 15. We have two unreleased items: MUFG Capsule and the Ultra Link Amp. Official announcements from Ingress can’t come soon enough. These items features can be inferred but are truly unknown until Niantic lets us know.

I will be at the upcoming Nashville anomaly on June 20. Come say Hi if you want a free Lirpa patch and/or want to talk nerd stuff!