Pokémon GO Discontinued Support for Android 6 - Discussion
NianticTintino-ING
Posts: 1,103Niantic › admin
Hello Explorers,
As you may have seen already, wanted to give you a heads up that Pokémon GO is ending support for devices running on Android 6, “Marshmallow,” in their next release. What does this have to do with Wayfarer? This means that if you are running Android 6 or earlier, you won’t be able to make any more nominations from those devices in-game until you upgrade. It's encouraged that Explorers on Android 6 upgrade their OS for uninterrupted access to Pokémon GO and nomination capabilities from within the game. There are no changes to which devices are supported. You can find more information about this change here.
Check out the original post here.
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It's good to see that Niantic is focusing on keeping up with more modern technology, however, it is worth pointing out that many modern Android phones suffer from the inability to submit nominations because Pokemon Go / Ingress cannot handle the image quality of high-resolution cameras on new devices and using such photos crashes the app. This bug has been around since 2020 with continued complaints of the issue since then, and nothing seems to have been done:
https://community.wayfarer.nianticlabs.com/discussion/5440/game-crashing-after-take-a-photo/p1
While players who are able to upgrade from Android 6 will be able to continue playing Pokemon Go and submitting Wayspots for now, players on these older phones are getting closer and closer to having support end for their devices requiring them to upgrade to newer phones, where potentially they still won't be able to nominate Pokestops because of longstanding unresolved bugs.
@NianticTintino-ING
Any word about wayfarer app on android?
The end of Android 6 (Marshmallow) support in Pokémon GO will most likely not be a problem.
Android 6 was released in June 2015, and we can assume that the most recent models that have only been updated to Android 6 are also smartphones released in 2016, and the oldest model that can be updated to Android 6 is the NEXUS 5.
Therefore, there should be almost no players who are thought to be currently using it.
However, you may want to be a little careful with Android 7 (Nougat), although it is unclear when the next update will be available.
Thanks for posting to try and make sure as many as possible are aware.
Wait, so this is the Pokémon GO forum after all? Or will Ingress updates about compatibility be shared also?
This should be moved to the pokemon go reddit page!
Pokémon GO/Niantic are sponsoring The Silph Road. They have a Reddit, maybe it should just go there instead of here.
Pokemon Go is one of the two sources for the nominations we review and submit, that's why it is relevant.
If you’re submitting, you’ll have seen the in game pop up two days ago, and may have seen the help article.
I understand the point of it being shared, but it’s not gonna help that some think of this forum as a Pokémon GO one firstly, and a Wayfarer one secondly.
Niantic communicating things via multiple sources is a step in the right direction for them and something to be encouraged.
And honestly, it's laughable to pretend that pokemon go discussion is somehow dominating this forum when its mere mention draws comments like we can see above. Ingress and pogo are both discussed on this forum, for better or for worse. It became much more tolerated after an ingress gameplay question made it into a wayfarer AMA which was ostensibly game-neutral.
I do think that spreading the information I related places is important. Players rightly complain when something passes them buy. at least this way different routes have been tried. And one thread is not exactly huge.
Since Tintino has created a thread on Wayfinder to confirm that there are no issues on Wayfarer's part in making this decision, I see no problem with discussing it in this forum.
And it is also strange to move something that is being discussed in an official forum place all the way to an unofficial place.
Now we wait…
Wayfarer has no particular problem with the suspension of Android 7 support in Ingress.
The impact on gameplay will be discussed in the Ingress forum.
In my case, it affects me a little bit, but it was inevitable in the future, so I accept this announcement.
However, I was surprised that Ingress will stop support to Android 7, not the same as Pokémon GO stopping Android 6 support.
I personally am looking forward to this announcement, along with the voice AR announced before it, as I believe it has something to do with Niantic's recently announced VPS system and Wayfarer's location fixes in 6 major cities this past spring.
However @NianticTintino-ING did feel we needed a thread about the Pokémon GO update to minimum requirements because;
you won’t be able to make any more nominations from those devices in-game until you upgrade.
but doesn’t seem it was worth mentioning Ingress because it doesn’t bring in as much moolah 💰
As this is the Pokémon GO compatibility update thread;
As Ingress updates don’t seem to matter as much as Pokémon GO, I’ll share the update notes here as it updates what OS are needed.