Welcome everyone to another teardown of Pokémon Go. For those unaware we make a difference report between two versions and blog about it. This allows us to find the newest and upcoming changes to a game prior to official announcements and possibly find things that were not announced. With that out of the way, let’s jump into 0.33.0.
Legal v2
Talked about previously in 0.31.0, we saw Niantic take strides in introducing some legal notices on every launch. They have now added an additional check for speeding. Ingress has ripple, which prevents actions while driving. It seems Pokémon took the route of just a pop up message that can be easily dismissed.
Pokémon Go Plus
The 1st party accessory that is coming has made great progress in terms of development. We can now see the features this hardware will have.
<string name="Captured_Pokemon">You captured a Pokémon!</string>
<string name="Connecting_GO_Plus">Connecting Pokémon Go PLUS</string>
<string name="Disconnecting_GO_Plus">Disconnecting Pokémon GO Plus</string>
<string name="Item_Inventory_Full">No items retrieved. Your inventory is full.</string>
<string name="Out_Of_Pokeballs">You are out of Pokéballs.</string>
<string name="Pokemon_Escaped">The Pokémon fled!</string>
<string name="Pokemon_Go_Plus">Pokemon GO Plus</string>
<string name="Pokemon_Inventory_Full">No more room for Pokémon.</string>
<string name="Pokestop_Cooldown">Pokéstop is cooling down. Try again later.</string>
<string name="Pokestop_Out_Of_Range">Pokéstop is out of range.</string>
<string name="Retrieved_Items">You retrieved %s items from the Pokéstop.</string>
<string name="Retrieved_an_Item">You retrieved an item from the Pokéstop.</string>
<string name="Session_Ended">Your Pokémon GO Plus session has ended. Select this to launch Pokémon GO!</string>
From this we can see the following features:
- Capturing Pokémon
- Getting Gear from Poké Stops
Nearby becomes Sightings
What started as a 3 step tracking system and then was removed is now known as Sightings.
With our initial testing, no duplicate Pokémon will appear on this list and the list tends to update every 10-15 seconds. I noticed Pokémon being added and removed from the list as I moved around. Our initial tests and research are too small to draw any conclusions.
Niantic additionally posted the following message in their release notes.
We’re currently testing a variation of the “Nearby Pokémon” feature with a subset of users. During this period you may see some variation in the nearby Pokémon UI.
This possibly aligns with additional strings we saw in this release.
<string name="Tracked_Pokemon_Found">You found the Pokémon you were tracking.</string>
<string name="Tracked_Pokemon_Lost">The Pokémon you were tracking is gone.</string>
As you can see, this new feature may give the ability to track a certain Pokémon.
Name Change
What once required a support ticket in Ingress is now available in game for 1 free nickname change. For those who messed up their nickname or wish to change it, here is your chance.
Conclusion
Releases are coming quite frequently, so features and tweaks will continue to come. We additionally saw bugs fixed such as:
- Medals showing incorrect image [Both]
- Battery saver mode returned [iOS]
- XP returned for Nice, Great & Excellent throws [Both]
- Map rendering fixes [Android]
- [technical] New HTTP Library (Volley)
- [technical] Upsight updated to 4.2.2 from 4.0.7
I’ll see you guys on the next version!