Pokémon Champ
I tell you what man, there are some real smart cookies out there in the world. First we had Pokévision, which told us where Pokemon were currently spawned in any given area, and don’t get me wrong, that was freakin’ awesome.
But now there’s something even more powerful. Something that is going to change the way this game is played, for better or for worse. Something that people will inevitably try to ban, and call people cheaters for using. I’m talking about Pokénotify.
Pokénotify is an app that, like the name would suggest, notifies you whenever Pokémon are nearby. The cool things about this app is that you don’t even need Pokémon GO running for it to work; simply connect to the Internet with your GPS switched on, and Pokénotify will start scanning your local area.
Not one to pass up an opportunity to use a Pokémon tracker that works (Sorry Niantic, but you need to fix your damn game already!), I quickly downloaded the app and turned it on. Within seconds, I was told that there was an Eevee nearby.
Pretty neat, huh? It tells you what Pokémon are nearby, their distance from your current location in metres, and how long you have until they disappear. But guess what? It gets better.
You see that picture of the Eevee in my notification bar? Well, when you click on the picture of a Pokémon, it opens up Google Maps with the EXACT location of that Pokémon, and your own current location.
This. App. Is. Amazing. The next thing I did was, of course, run after that damn Eevee. It only took me a couple of minutes of slow jogging (I had to be quick because he was about to disappear!), and then boom, the little sucker showed his face.
And as you can see in the next picture, the Eevee spawned pretty much exactly where Pokénotify said it would. As you can imagine, I was pretty excited at this point (it felt like Christmas), and went on to catch another 8 Pokémon with the help of the app.
But before you run off to download Pokénotify, there are a few things that you need to know. I’ll give you the quick run-down right now.
First up, the app isn’t currently available for iPhone users. Sorry guys, but you’re just going to have to wait. The creator of the app has said that bringing the app to iPhone is on the top of his to-do list, and he’s going to get started on it over the weekend, so you won’t have to wait long.
Second, this app is going to save you a crap load of battery. Instead of walking around with Pokémon GO open, chewing up your battery, you’ll be able to open the game only when you KNOW there’s something good nearby and you want to go catch it. I’d estimate that your battery could easily last an hour or two longer every day, which is awesome.
Third, the app creator has said that he’s going to look into adding a few new features. The biggest and most important one (in my opinion) is the ability to select/deselect all Pokémon at once. As it stands now, you have to manually go through and tick which Pokémon you want to be notified about, and it’s pretty tedious. See what I mean:
Finally, this app is totally safe from Niantic. This means you won’t get banned for using it. The creator of the app has stated that since Pokénotify doesn’t require access to your Pokémon GO account, there’s no way Niantic can tell if you’re using the app or not. Yay.
And that’s pretty much all you need to know about this awesome, awesome app.
Update: The app has been taken down from Google Play and the app creator has been emailed by Google, asking him to stop. The app has been re-uploaded to a website in .apk format, and if you’re still interested, you can grab it here. (I will update this section if the app is placed on the Google Play store again.)
If you want to get in touch with the app creator to give feedback and/or ask for new features, here’s the link to his post on Reddit.
But what do you guys think? Would you consider this app a form of cheating? Or do you think there’s nothing wrong with using it since the in-game tracker is faulty as hell? Let me know in the comments below!
