Chủ Nhật, 7 tháng 8, 2016
With the whole world playing Pokémon Go, you need every advantage to stay ahead. Here are some of the hacks to get an edge on the competition when chasing pocket monsters, from easy to way advanced. So you finally cornered a rare Mewtwo Pokémon. It’s time to still your beating heart and capture the critter with a well-timed Poké Ball toss. Shooting straight can be tricky, but this low-tech prop will help you make every shot count: it’s just a piece of screen-wide paper with two sticky notes on both sides to guide your finger along. In addition to catching monsters in the wild, an important part of Pokémon husbandry is hatching them from eggs. That requires actual walking, as much as 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) for the highest level monsters. Riding in a car or even a bicycle doesn’t seem to work, but strapping the phone to a ceiling fan with a rubber band does the trick. Those that do leave the house, quickly discover that the game excels at draining smartphone batteries. But why buy a charger pack when you can laboriously manufacture your very own custom handheld Pokémon encyclopedia? Unless you already own a 3D printer, a trip to a local maker space is in order. Borrow their soldering iron and wire the battery to a handful of components. You’ve just doubled your supply of juice and earned major DIY street cred. While most of you were skipping around in the sun catching Pidgeys, some people were holed up at home reverse-engineering server traffic and posting in online forums about obscure topics like protocol buffers. That’s how the app store is chock-full of third-party Pokémon maps even though the game’s developer Niantic Inc. doesn’t offer an official software interface. Some went further to create bots that can roam the map, collect items and hunt monsters. Before the robots come for your jobs, they’ll take your rare Pokémon first. Under the hood, Pokémon Go relies on the smartphone’s ability to find its location in the world by catching signals from satellites above. It’s possible to fake the transmission using hardware that can be bought for as little as $300 and software available for free. Although this kind of black magic may get you banned from the game and possibly arrested for operating a signal jammer—you can teleport your Pokémon hunter anywhere in the world. As a coup de grace for a game that’s intended to get you outdoors, add a joystick for enhanced comfort. Pokémon Done. This article originally published at Bloomberg here Level: Newbie
Level: Maker
Level: Bot Master
Level: Mad Scientist
Thứ Hai, 25 tháng 7, 2016
SINGAPORE — Another day, another Pokémon Go-related drama. On Sunday, Singapore's minister for communications and information, Yaacob Ibrahim, told reporters that he had serious concerns about the hit game and suggested that it should be closely monitored. According to Ibrahim, the game risks having a negative impact on Singapore's society, and it was therefore necessary that the government "study very, very carefully whatever is brought into Singapore." People are obviously not happy with this sentiment. Following Ibrahim's comments, Tan Min-Liang, CEO of gaming company Razer, took to Facebook to post a lengthy rant. In his post, Tan criticised the government for its "schizophrenic" approach towards the gaming industry in the country. He went on to describe how such attitudes that belong "in the 19th century" needed to change in order to make way for creativity in gaming to thrive. "In case you missed it, gaming is an artform, it's also now the biggest medium for creative expression — far outstripping movies and music," he wrote. "And try as you might, you're not going to get very far censoring and banning games willy-nilly because games will always find a way— to game (ba-dum-tss) the system." Pokémon Go still has yet to launch in Singapore, although there have been rumours that it will be dropping sometime this week. The wildly popular game was released in Hong Kong on Monday, making the city the second Asian stop after Japan.
Thứ Bảy, 23 tháng 7, 2016
Pokémon Go is easy enough for anyone to pick up, but if you want to catch 'em all, you'll need to master the art of throwing Poké Balls. For the most part, catching a Pokémon in the game is as simple as throwing a Poké Ball straight up at the monster and hoping it doesn't escape. You can also throw a curve ball at Pokémon, but that's a more advanced technique. To get the perfect straight throw every time, My Mini Factory user Jon Cleaver has created this clever Poké Ball "aimer" case for iPhone. With the case slipped over an iPhone, players can swipe perfectly straight up whenever they encounter a Pokémon. (Click to enlarge) Image: jon cleaver/my mini factory (Click to enlarge) Image: Jon cleaver/my mini factory "This 3D printable Pokeball aimer ensures your finger never goes astray," says Cleaver. "Simply slip your iPhone into the case, give it a flick, and you’ll be catching Pokemon with ease." Sure, you'll only be cheating yourself. And deep down in your heart you'll know you used a 3D-printed accessory to help you. But who's gonna know when you show all your friends your near complete Pokémon collection? If you own or have access to a 3D printer, you can print your own Pokémon "aimer" case using the free model. The case only fits iPhone 6 and 6S devices, but if there's enough demand (and we bet there will be), Cleaver says he'll consider making versions for other phones. Another fan 3D-printed a Pokédex. It looks cool and has a built-in battery pack, but it won't increase your success of catching Pokémon as with Cleaver's case.
Thứ Năm, 7 tháng 7, 2016
It's fair to say Pokémon Go has sent people wild again for the 20-year-old gaming franchise. The augmented reality mobile game became available for Australians and New Zealanders on Wednesday morning, as well as Americans later that evening, with grown adults back trying to "catch 'em all" like they once did as children. It shouldn't be a surprise that the game's heavy use of the phone's camera and GPS makes it a serious battery killer. Users have been chronicling how the game chews up their phone's batteries on Twitter, and it ain't pretty. My poor phone battery. How will it cope with now having to run location services with #Tinder AND #PokemonGO? pic.twitter.com/bk90KQOqKK — ✨Victoria Vixen ✨ (@ohyoufox) July 6, 2016 Me: 51% battery should be enough. #PokemonGO: Nope. — Krishna (@KrishnaTheKumar) July 7, 2016 I'm losing more battery power than I am calories. #PokemonGO — Cyris (@CyrisXD) July 6, 2016 Mashable Australia fortunately got the game loaded up on a iPhone 6S, with plenty of time to catch some Pokémon while at work. For the purposes of this test, we've turned Bluetooth and Wi-Fi off on the phone, and we'll operate the phone on a 4G cellular network. In the game, Pokémon Go keeps your phone's screen on, unless you manually lock your phone. We'll keep the screen on the whole time for the test. The game also has a "battery saver" mode which you can activate, although we won't be turning that on for the test. According to the game's developer Niantic, all "battery saver" does is disable your screen when you point your phone downward, but the app will continue to track you and notify of nearby Pokémon. That's sort of useful, we guess. In the test, we'll also be measuring how much mobile data the app uses, as unlimited mobile data isn't really a thing in Australia unfortunately. 1:45 p.m. - 99 percent battery. The phone's battery is full and we're ready to go. We captured a nearby Poliwag and a Staryu, starting the day off strong. 1:54 p.m. - 89 percent battery. It's been less than 10 minutes of play on Pokémon Go and we've already decimated a tenth of the phone's battery. On the plus side, we've just reached level 5 in the game. Image: mashable australia Image: mashable australia 2:05 p.m. - 83 percent battery. After letting off some incense in the game to attract wild Pokémon, we've ended up being surrounded by three Zubats. Damn you, Pokémon Go. 2:25 p.m. - 70 percent battery, 3.9 megabytes of mobile data used. Whoa, that was a big drop in battery life. All we did is visit a PokéStop, with the Zubats disappearing in the meantime. Despite an early surge of action and a big chunk of battery life lost, we've only managed to use 3.9 megabytes of mobile data thus far. 2:36 p.m. - 60 percent battery. We spent about five minutes trying to capture a Golbat, while being sent outside due to a compulsory fire drill in the building, resulting in another deep plunge in our phone's battery percentage. Overall, our iPhone's battery life has been reduced by 40 percent in only 51 minutes. Image: mashable australia Image: mashable australia 2:52 p.m. - 56 percent battery, 5.2 megabytes of mobile data used. It's a busy time in the Pokémon Go world. We've captured a Krabby, while also scoring items from a PokéStop. Shockingly, it didn't kill off our battery once and for all, after a dramatic half an hour. 3:15 p.m. - 43 percent battery. We've done nothing in the game and somehow it has shaved 13 percent of our phone's battery. Thanks for that. 3:32 p.m. - 31 percent battery, 8.4 megabytes of data used, and our first app crash of the day! The Pokémon gravy train wasn't going to last for long. The game crashed on us for the first time, and it wasn't going to be the last. 3:45 p.m. - 23 percent battery and the second app crash. Our phone can't handle the Pokémon heat it seems, as the game crashes again. At this point, Pokémon Go has destroyed 77 percent of our phone's battery life in less than two hours. BUT I WANT TO PLAY POKÉMON NOW. Image: mashable australia 3:48 p.m. - Still 23 percent battery and now the servers are experiencing issues. It's Pokémon No as the game tells us "our servers are experiencing issues" and to "please come back later," making us quite the annoyed trainer. The worst part about the server issues screen is that you have to log yourself in again, which will happen over and over again if you can't get in because of the problem. Not fun at all. 4:13 p.m. - 13 percent battery and we're back in the game. After trying to get back in the game for 25 minutes, we're back. No clue on what's causing those server issues, by the way. When everyone cant get on pokemongo cause of server issues but you never left the server so you still playin pic.twitter.com/7n7fwvPPTt — Allergy Meds (@unSanctuary) July 7, 2016 4:31 p.m. - 1 percent battery! This is it folks. Hope you had a fun ride. We've captured some Pokémon together, developed some great friendships and had a jolly good time. Kumbaya, my lord. 4:40 p.m. - The phone is still alive. Like the fuel gauge on one's car, "empty" seems to not really mean empty. The same applies to batteries, which seem to cling on to dear life for ages like that woman in the movie Cliffhanger, until they die at the moment you need it. 4:45 p.m. - Now the phone is dead. It was a good life. Exactly three hours, although 25 minutes of server issues stopped us from playing. So in actual playing time, we had 2 hours and 35 minutes of pure Pokémon Go. The app chewed up 15 megabytes of mobile data, which is surprisingly light for a game that is reliant on it. This will surely increase as you move about from location to location, requiring the game to download new maps and images. Of course, most people won't be playing Pokémon Go for three hours straight. The game is obviously designed as an accompaniment to our day-to-day lives, as we wander around our city checking emails, look at Facebook or snap photos on Instagram. These activities are hardly easy on a phone's battery either. Good times ahead for external USB battery manufacturers I guess #PokemonGO — Anthony B, (@swearyanthony) July 6, 2016 If you want to save on battery life, you can try switching on the "battery saver" option in the app's settings, or do the usual battery saving techniques such as turning down your brightness, exiting other power hungry apps, or ones that use background data. You can also try and save a bit by turning off the augmented reality option in the top right when trying to capture your Pokémon. This will turn off the camera, defaulting to a generic background instead of your real world surroundings. But for many people already addicted to the game, the solution to saving battery life is simple: Buy a battery pack. Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
A test to see how long non-stop Pokémon Go will last on a phone
The countdown to a dead battery
How long did our phone's battery last and what's the data usage?
