NEW DETAILS ABOUT GO+ WEARABLE

The Pokémon GO Plus is a wearable device that uses low energy Bluetooth pairing to connect to the Pokémon GO app on your phone. The device will vibrate and blink its LED light to give you notifications of in-game events, and you can press the little button in the center of the device to interact with the game without using your phone. We have known about this little gadget since the initial Pokémon GO announcement, and we immediately got a closer look with some great pictures here and here. But while we were able to see the device, there were still many questions about exactly what it did. Some of those questions are now answered, with the Silph Road's APK teardown of the recent v0.21.1 update last Friday. Some of the revealed functionality is seen below.

Notifications

• Reached Pokéstop
• Spawned Pokémon
• Encounter Results

Interactivity

• Hack Pokéstop
• Enter Encounter
• Throw Pokéball

One of the problems with Ingress is that your face is always down looking at your phone. The genre aims to get you exploring the cool places around you, but right now users are sometimes not taking very much of it in. The GO+ wearable will change this by alerting you to events in-game without having to be absorbed in a screen. These notifications can be toggled individually, if there are some things that you would like to be aware of and others that you would rather not be bothered with.

Pokéstops

Your GO+ can vibrate/blink to let you know when there is a Pokéstop nearby. You can then press the button in order to get items from it, such as Pokéballs, potions, or Pokémon eggs. There is also the phrase 'Hack Sequence' used throughout the code, which may have relevance to Pokéstops. (Perhaps you will have to press the button in a specific sequence instead of one simple push.)

Pokémon

Your GO+ can vibrate/blink to let you know when there is a Pokémon nearby. If you get sick of this notification buzzing every minute, you can limit it to only notify you when the nearby Pokémon is one that you haven't caught before, or to only notify you if it is a legendary Pokémon, or both. When you receive this notification, you can use the button on the device in order to enter an encounter with the Pokémon. This is where the functionality below comes into play.

Encounters

Once you have used your GO+ to enter an encounter with a wild Pokémon, your device will vibrate/blink to let you know when the app is ready for you to throw a Pokéball. You can then use the button on the device to do so, throwing a Pokéball at the Pokémon. You will feel the Pokéball shake via the device, and you will be able to tell through the blinking/vibration whether the Pokémon was successfully caught, or if it broke free from the Pokéball. If the Pokémon broke free, you can repeat the process and try to throw another Pokéball at the Pokémon by pressing the button on the GO+.