Ingress APK Teardown [1.85.1]

Welcome back everyone. Another surprise Sunday release hit us today. This is version 1.85.1 on Android, and is currently on a 1% roll out to a Play Store near you. Assuming no major errors, this version will reach a 100% roll out within a few days. Like prior posts, we can peek into this apk and figure out what is coming.

Key Capsule Locker

First discovered in the 1.83.1 teardown, this item has seen a lot of functionality tweaks/changes.

• The item was renamed from “Key Capsule” to “Key Locker“.
• You can store 100 Portal keys in a single Key Locker.
  • Yes, only portal keys.
  • Items in this locker do not count towards inventory limit.
• You can only have 5 Key Lockers. Confirmed via string in the application and server side change.
• You can buy 5 different color Key Lockers (gold, green, white, blue, red) in the store.
  • Not sure if Key Lockers will be obtainable outside of IAP (In App Purchase).
• We will update this post when we have a render of this item.

<string name="ITEM_DESCRIPTION_KEY_CAPSULE">Store 100 Portal Keys outside Inventory limit. Limit of 5 per Agent.</string>

 Powerups

Also discovered initially in 1.83.1, we have more details on these new item(s).

• Power up: Portal Fracker
  • Doubles Hack output for 10 minutes or 150 hacks, whichever comes first
  • Portal Fracker is more than likely per agent. So it only affects the agent who used the item, but this could change.
  • It appears this powerup might be per portal. So a Portal Powerup gets applied to a portal and lasts for 10 minutes or 150 hacks for just that portal, benefiting everyone who interacts with that portal.
  • <string name=”COMM_AP_MESSAGE_USING_A_PORTAL_POWERUP”>Gained %s AP for deploying a Portal Powerup</string>
  • There is a new UI class called fracked-portal-effect. So there will probably be a visual indicator while you have one active.
  • We will update this post when we have a render of this item.
• Power up: Portal Beacon
  • Beacon above target power for 4 hours.
  • Comes in a variety of types
    • RES (Beacon – RES)
    • ENL (Beacon – ENL)
    • Niantic (Beacon – Niantic)
    • Meet (Beacon – Meetup)
    • Look (Beacon – Target)
    • Other (Beacon)
  • It appears this beacon icons will show up on scanner like a waypoint.
  • Unsure if this beacon can be placed by users or staff only.

These beacons look like meeting points for both sides (Res/Enl) for events, drinks for a meet up (possibly 1st Saturday) and an NL1331 icon for presumably the NL1331 events.

Store

Also discovered in 1.83.1, the Store saw the biggest changes this version. The addition of the Billing Permission was added to the AndroidManifest.xml file. This means you will receive a prompt from the Google Play Store asking you to accept the new permission.

• Inspecting the Play Store page shows this entry
  • $1.99 – $99.99 per item
  • Remember we saw the 200,000 CMU item in this post. Maybe that 200,000 CMU package is $99.99?
• Strings were added for various Store operations
  • Synthesizing Chaotic Matter Item
  • Transferring Chaotic Matter
  • Approval needed for purchase, please check back later.
  • Not enough CMU, please obtain more.
  • Exchange %1$s CMU for %2$s?
• Everything needed for the Store to function is present. This will probably be enabled server side after both platforms (iOS and Android) have this version and after a formal announcement.
• A preview of the items for sale can be found here.

Extras

We have a new sound! These are always fun to listen to ahead of time.

sfx_hack_split

Conclusion

This version was built on October 17 and released on October 25. Interesting changes are on the horizon as this is the first major development application wise, we have seen since Niantic went independent. Thanks to Justin for the APK

Nerd Information

Niantic is learning. Some of our methods for obtaining information early is now just returning “ERROR: SERVER“. They have taken care to isolate data exposure to only those authenticated. I guess they might have been upset about the leaking of store details.

Additionally, the Terms of Service were updated on October 22. Mainly legal information about IAPs, but some interesting notes about disassembling APKs. Thanks to Jose Antonio Rey for letting us know about this.