It's been months since the launch of Pokemon Go Plus, a device that assists Pokemon Go players by not requiring them to take out their phones or tablets and still enjoy the game, well for most part of it.
A device that serves as an extension to your phone while playing Pokemon Go is nice. And now it is available in a form of Pokemon Go plus, in case you haven't heard yet. It only does two things. One: collect items from PokeStops, two: to catch wild Pokemon. All in the convenience of not taking out your phone or tablet from your pocket or bag respectively. At this point with all the advancements in software and hardware, I'd think the device would go obsolete sooner or later. So, I'll tackle this one today.
What does it do again, this Pokemon Go Plus thing?
Well, basically it's an accessory which you can strap on your wrist or use as a pin (does someone do this by the way?). It vibrates an shows you a bunch of LED colors, red, green, and blue, which signify if a Pokemon is on your range to catch, or a PokeStop is due for collection. The users action will only be click on the device and some tasks are then automated for you. One thing you need to know though, is that it's uncertain if you caught the Pokemon because the default PokeBall being used in the automated catch is the red one.
When issues happen, the red light flashes on different patterns to signify, a failed catch, letting you know you ran out of PokeBalls, your inventory is full for either item or Pokemon, and other technical problems like connectivity. If there's one good thing that came out of Pokemon Go Plus, it's the ability to count your travelled distance even if your phone is locked.
How is it going to be obsolete sooner or later?
A post at Otakukart.com suggests that the Pokemon Go device does not have any way for its software to be tweaked in any way to make it a 'smarter device', maybe add an alarm clock on the next build? Anyway, the thought of the post is that sooner or later, the device will soon be boring because it only does a couple of things which I discussed above and its software is not upgrade-able.
At this point I thought, ok, maybe we're better off with the Apple Watch and that Pebble thing from Android, at least that's tweakable. But yeah, the article has a point. Sooner or later, we'll just throw away and wait for something like Pokemon Go Plus 2 thru 99, now it's starting to sound like Samsung Galaxy and iPhone with the iterations and stuff.
Which would lead to a couple of questions, are we game enough to spend for a newer Pokemon Go plus device when it's out? Or will there be a permanent device as expensive as a whole smartphone that Niantic would just update the software everytime it needs to. Oviously, the latter is impractical, and the former is expensive but numbers for the first iteration show that people would buy it right away. So, might as well just play Pokemon Go with your phone or tablet without the aid of a device that only saves you a bunch of taps.
