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Re:Pokémon Go data usage draws attention of House Energy and... by TeMPOraL on Thursday July 21, 2016 @03:19AM (#12135297)
The game is a descendant of Ingress, so anyone familiar with the latter should at least have a feel on how much data it uses. Also, it's obviously a multiplayer game (even if the multiplayer aspect is limited), and it shows you the map of the real world, which kind of sets an expectation of it downloading data...

...that said, Pokémon Go could sure use a lot more caching. It seems that (didn't confirm with a packet sniffer, but latency says it all), for example, it redownloads all Pokéstop data whenever you visit it. That's IMO utterly ridiculous - a Pokéstop is pretty much a permanent fixture (an ex-Ingress portal), it doesn't change, and the user itself is expected to mostly stay in the same geographical area. I don't see any good reason not to cache at least the visual stuff.

Which brings me to the general problem of the hipstery approach to development - download and redownload everything from Internet ad infinitum, as if everyone had broadband and electricity was free.

Re:Pokémon Go data usage draws attention of House Energy and... by egypturnash on Thursday July 21, 2016 @03:43AM (#12135363)
> anyone familiar with [Ingress] should at least have a feel on how much data [Pokemon Go] uses

Most of the people playing Pokemon have probably never heard of Ingress.

I agree that it could use a lot more caching, though!

Re:Pokémon Go data usage draws attention of House Energy and... by pjc50 on Thursday July 21, 2016 @05:42AM (#12135775)
The thing is, it's a descendant of Ingress, but it feels like a cheap clone. It seems to be worse in some regards. I think Ingress does cache the photos it uses for portals. Pokemon Go is tremendously resource-hungry; I can play Ingress fine on my Moto G, but PGo's stated memory requirements are far larger, it crashes regularly (about every 5-10 minutes), and it gets very warm in the process. And the Pokedex is completely broken.