Pokémon GO APK Teardown [0.53.1]

Hi everyone and welcome back to another Pokémon teardown. These versions have a lot more than what is described in the official changelog, so let’s take a peek with Android version 0.53.1.

Costumes, Gender, Species and More

It appears as noted in previous teardowns that

Species
Gender
Costume
Shiny

will be filter options for Pokémon in the Pokédex. We can already see Gender on some Pokémon with this version, so this change must be nearing completion of development.

While all Pikachu prior to this version had the male sprite, we see some in the latest update have turned to female! A male Pikachu has a flat ended tail while the female has a heart shaped one.

News, News, News

We found some interesting lines added this version.

    action.news_dismissed
    action.news_link_clicked
    action.news_updated_app
    action.news_viewed

    Failed to get news: {0}
    Failed to get a link for news popup: {0}
    Failed to download news asset: {0}

Included with those news articles were the download links for both Android and iOS versions. It seems weird to have the download links for an application inside said application so I’m curious how those will be used.

You can see from the added icon, that this will more than likely appear on the main screen alongside settings and other buttons.

Gen2 – Unown & forms coming?

There was a new class added called “FormSettings” and for those familiar with Pokémon know that Unown has a ton of forms. They range from Unown A to Unown Z with a couple of random punctuation characters like ! and ?

    UNOWN_A
    UNOWN_B
    UNOWN_Z
    UNOWN_QUESTION_MARK
    UNOWN_EXCLAMATION_POINT

It seems that Pokémon Go will support this unique characteristic.

More Moves!

Added were the following Fast & Charged moves. The data on these moves will be automatically added to our Pokédex once the data hits the servers. Right now we simply have the move names.

Quick	Counter
Quick	Powder Snow
Charged	Close Combat
Charged	Dynamic Punch
Charged	Focus Blast
Charged	Aurora Beam
Quick	Charge Beam
Quick	Volt Switch
Charged	Wild Charge
Charged	Zap Cannon
Quick	Dragon Tail
Charged	Avalanche
Quick	Air Slash
Charged	Brave Bid
Charged	Sky Attack
Charged	Sand Tomb
Charged	Rock Blast
Quick	Infestation
Quick	Struggle Bug
Charged	Silver Wind
Quick	Astonish
Quick	Hex
Charged	Night Shade
Quick	Iron Tail
Charged	Gyro Ball
Charged	Heavy Slam
Quick	Fire Spin
Charged	Overheat
Quick	Bullet Seed
Charged	Grass Knot
Charged	Energy Ball
Quick	Extrasensory
Charged	Futuresight
Charged	Mirror Coat
Charged	Outrage
Quick	Snarl
Charged	Crunch
Charged	Foul Play

Avatar Personalization

Additional customizations were added

Belt
Glasses
Necklace

A variety of customizations have been added for the past few versions but not enabled. To remind everyone, we now have this list of items to customize. Whenever this gets enabled, avatars will have no end to customization.

Hair
Shirt
Pants
Hat
Shoes
Eyes
Backpack
Gloves
Socks
Belt
Glasses
Necklace

Evolution Requirements

Like some Pokémon in Generation II. You need more items to evolve a Pokémon. We can see

    get_EvolutionItemRequirement();
    FAILED_INVALID_ITEM_REQUIREMENT;
    EvolutionBranchFieldNumber;

Cross referencing this with the new items added in this version, we can assume the following items are for evolving:

Sun Stone
King’s Rock
Metal Coast
Dragon Scale
Up Grade

While in the code, these items are lacking images. My guess is much like Pokémon images are now, all new assets for this game will be loaded server side. This prevents leaking details until they are released.

Conclusion

While chuck full of changes, the bulk of these changes will have to be activated with a server side change. Rest assured when that happens, the Internet will know.