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New Pokémon Go Update Adds Buddies, Drops Rooted Phones
This weekend, Pokémon Go's latest update will add a much-wanted feature and see the end of support for jailbroken or rooted phones.
Version 1.7.0 for iOS and 0.37.0 for Android of Pokémon Go will add the ability for players to turn one of their Pokémon into a buddy, which they can have follow them around in order to gain more candy for that species of Pokémon. Early reports indicate different Pokémon will require different distances walked in order to obtain a single piece of candy. The update will also make it easier to choose smaller Pokémon when they appear on the map, prevent Eggs from hatching without their accompanying animation, improve performance when a device switches networks, and add Pokémon Go Plus support.
The update will also remove support rooted or jailbroken phones. "We continue to focus on eliminating bots and scrapers from Pokémon Go," said Niantic in their blog post about the update. "Rooted or jailbroken devices are not supported by Pokémon Go. Remember to download Pokémon Go from the official Google Play Store or iTunes App Store only."
As with most Pokémon Go updates, the update will go live for different users at different times over the next couple of days.
[Source: PokemonGoLive]
Our Take
I'm not sure how I feel about Niantic kicking out rooted users. On one hand, rooted phones are more likely to spoof their GPS location or use bots, which is essentially cheating. People root their phones for all sorts of reasons, so having a rooted phone alone should perhaps not be the only metric of cheating the company uses. But as an unrooted iOS user, I'm more concerned I'll have to walk five kilometers just to get one candy for my buddy Growlithe, Hopefully that won't be the case.
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