Pokemon go buy a new phone - Niantic halts 32-bit development

[jagdtigger]

11 hours ago, porina said:

Do any of these phones still get security updates? 5 years is practically forever in phone terms. 

It depends, factory FW no. "Cooked" FW probably yes.... (My SGS5 still gets  them, LOS.)

 

  

5 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

There is no excuse or valid reason for 32Bit handsets to still be in use after this long. 

Then you should be paying the upgrade cost for all the ppl who uses old phones because they cannot afford a new one..... And then there are ppl like me who likes when a phone has a user replaceable battery, its just so much cheaper and time efficient than todays idiotic glued in battery BS..... (And here is the kicker, the s5 is water resistant despite the removable backside.)

Edited June 15, 2020 by jagdtigger

[Curious Pineapple]

5 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Hmm, Apple introduced the worlds first consumer ARM processor with the A7 in 2013. 
 

There is no excuse or valid reason for 32Bit handsets to still be in use after this long. 

Maybe they still work?

[Liltrekkie]

5 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Hmm, Apple introduced the worlds first consumer ARM processor with the A7 in 2013. 
 

There is no excuse or valid reason for 32Bit handsets to still be in use after this long. 

Sure there is, just because your small mind cannot think of a reason does not mean there isnt a valid reason. A lot of high end phones from there are still plenty good, I replaced my Droid Turbo's battery recently and I'm back to my insane amounts of battery life. Still plays every game you can think of, why should a person upgrade? Because it isn't new enough? That's a pretty piss poor reason, and a pretty piss poor snobby attitude to have too.

[DrMacintosh]

1 minute ago, Liltrekkie said:

why should a person upgrade?

Because software is no longer being developed for 32Bit systems, 32Bit systems are more vulnerable to attacks, and yes 32Bit devices are old. Too old to be trusted on a Network. 

[DrMacintosh]

17 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Maybe they still work?

You can turn on a Commodore 64 today and it will still work and do everything it was supposed to when it was designed. Does not change the fact that they are obsolete and only have sentimental value.  

[Liltrekkie]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Because software is no longer being developed for 32Bit systems, 32Bit systems are more vulnerable to attacks, and yes 32Bit devices are old. Too old to be trusted on a Network. 

If software was no longer being developed then explain how Pokemon Go, and literally tons of other games that receive daily updates and new features, still work? Obviously someone is maintaining that software. Also, 32 bit systems may be more vulnerable, but that doesn't matter if even recent phones aren't getting their security patches anyway. Many carriers are guilty of not pushing security patches as often, or ever, as they should. And let's not forget how iOS security is "fucked". I guess those phones can't be trusted on a network either. Care to amend your statements?

[Curious Pineapple]

14 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

You can turn on a Commodore 64 today and it will still work and do everything it was supposed to when it was designed. Does not change the fact that they are obsolete and only have sentimental value.  

Because a C64 is really a good comparison. We're talking 6 years here not 3 decades. Maybe in the Apple world you consider 6 years old to be an artifact of historic interest, but not everyone thinks that way.

 

8 minutes ago, Liltrekkie said:

If software was no longer being developed then explain how Pokemon Go, and literally tons of other games that receive daily updates and new features, still work? Obviously someone is maintaining that software. Also, 32 bit systems may be more vulnerable, but that doesn't matter if even recent phones aren't getting their security patches anyway. Many carriers are guilty of not pushing security patches as often, or ever, as they should. And let's not forget how iOS security is "fucked". I guess those phones can't be trusted on a network either. Care to amend your statements?

Prepare for cannon fire!

[DrMacintosh]

18 minutes ago, Liltrekkie said:

f software was no longer being developed then explain how Pokemon Go, and literally tons of other games that receive daily updates and new features, still work?

Are we just going to casually glance over how this topic is about Pokemon Go dropping 32Bit support? If it was so great they would still keep supporting it. There is no reason to support 32Bit because everyone else is on 64Bit and it's easier to have just 1 code base. 

[Liltrekkie]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

Are we just going to casually glance over how this topic is about Pokemon Go dropping 32Bit support? If it was so great they would still keep supporting it. There is no reason to support 32Bit because everyone else is on 64Bit and it's easier to have just 1 code base. 

And yet, it's been supported all this time, until a future update gets rid of it. But sure, let's cherry pick this one game over the millions of other games on the apple store and play store that still work with 32 bit devices, and probably will for some time. I also never said it was great, I said it still exists and is still okay to use. Obviously there still is a reason to still support it, and that's because the companies want to, they must still be making money from devices that old to make it worth while. At the end of the day it's the balance sheets that determine what course is taken. There is an old saying my engineer buddies say, there is the product you want to build, and there is the product accountants will let you build. Please stop with the newer is better tunnel vision, it's not healthy.

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, Liltrekkie said:

But sure, let's cherry pick this one game over the millions of other games on the apple store and play store that still work with 32 bit devices,

There are absolutely 0 32Bit apps on the Apple App Store. The Play Store might have a bunch of relics, but there isn't a single bit of 32Bit code that gets downloaded onto any iOS device. 

[Kisai]

15 hours ago, williamcll said:

So anyone with a qualcomm 801 or most if not all phones before 2016 is going to have a hard time.

 

Or they could have bought a better device in the first place, it's such a pity that Android phones don't come with a "warning, throw this phone out in 18 months" expiry date.

[Kisai]

31 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Are we just going to casually glance over how this topic is about Pokemon Go dropping 32Bit support? If it was so great they would still keep supporting it. There is no reason to support 32Bit because everyone else is on 64Bit and it's easier to have just 1 code base. 

The reason is that Unity dragged it's heels and got special exceptions from Apple and google to keep publishing 32-bit versions until Apple finally said "nope, go 64-bit or explain to your customers how you won't support mobile phones now."

 

It's also not the only engine that did this. Nearly every gacha-type game in Japan and Korea run on either Unity, GameMaker, Cocos2D or some in-house blend of Cocos2D and Mono. The developer that produces Fate Go and Madoka Magia gacha games uses Cocos2D, and it stopped supporting 32-bit a few months after it was released, and pretty much everyone who wanted to play either of those games had to chuck their Android phones in the trash, or switch to MEMU and play it on a PC.

[jagdtigger]

18 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Or they could have bought a better device in the first place

There are flagship phones in the list so its not a matter of buying "bad" phones.

[porina]

27 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Madoka Magia gacha game

How did I not know this existed until now? Wait, "This app is incompatible with all of your devices."  I doubt it is OS related in my case though, probably a region lock. Edit: can't get on iOS either.

[Kisai]

13 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

There are flagship phones in the list so its not a matter of buying "bad" phones.

A friend had to go through their dad's stash of what was at least a half dozen android phones looking for one to play the Madoka game and ultimately had to go with the PC Android emulator instead, because all the devices were 32-bit, and they weren't going to buy a new phone just to play a game.

[LAwLz]

15 hours ago, TofuHaroto said:

Didn't this game cause so much trouble 

Not really.

A lot of news articles liked to blow up every little thing that happened and where somewhat related to the game because it got a ton of clicks, but it was never really a big issue.

It's very important to be skeptical of the news these days.

Just because you see an article like "Pokemon Go: armed robbers use mobile game to lure players into trap" doesn't mean it is a big problem.

There are around 300,000 armed robberies every year in the US. As soon as one happened and Pokemon Go might have been involved, a ton of news outlets were all over it. Those other 299,999 robberies that happened? Meh, who cares. "Person gets robbed" won't get clicks. "Person gets robbed because of Pokemon Go" on the other hand...

 

 

7 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Hmm, Apple introduced the worlds first consumer ARM processor with the A7 in 2013. 
 

There is no excuse or valid reason for 32Bit handsets to still be in use after this long. 

You just had to shoehorn in that Apple had the first consumer oriented ARM processor architecture, didn't you?

I think there are plenty of valid reasons and excuses for still using 32bit Android devices in the year 2020. It's "just" 7 years if we're looking back on when the first 64bit processor launched. Several 32bit Android devices were sold with 32bit processors long after Apple had announced their A7 chip as well. So more realistically, we're talking about device that may be 5 years or so old.

Dropping support for 5 year old devices doesn't sound unreasonable in any direction if you ask me. It's not like people are going "wow holy crap they are still supporting 5 year old devices!?!?!?!" nor is anyone going "why are they dropping support after just 5 years!!?!?!".

 

I think you're coming off a bit too strong when you say there is no valid reason or excuse for a 32bit device to still be used.

 

 

7 hours ago, ImAlsoRan said:

100% agree. Developing for different versions of ARM is a pain and a half.

In what way is it a pain for Android?

Unless you're doing something with the NDK, isn't it just changing a flag and boom, you're done. Hell, I am not even sure you need to change a flag. Doesn't Android just take care of all that in the background?

[Haro]

5 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Those other 299,999 robberies that happened? Meh, who cares. "Person gets robbed" won't get clicks. "Person gets robbed because of Pokemon Go" on the other hand...

Oh yea no I agree 

I never trust main stream media but I was wondering why because I forgot why people were saying it's dangerous or something

[Zodiark1593]

3 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

There are absolutely 0 32Bit apps on the Apple App Store. The Play Store might have a bunch of relics, but there isn't a single bit of 32Bit code that gets downloaded onto any iOS device. 

*is wondering how the heck my grandfather’s iPhone 4S was able to download Minecraft and Futuremark if no 32-bit code is allowed on App Store* 

[Zodiark1593]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

In what way is it a pain for Android?

Unless you're doing something with the NDK, isn't it just changing a flag and boom, you're done. Hell, I am not even sure you need to change a flag. Doesn't Android just take care of all that in the background?

Considering Pokemon GO is a somewhat complex 3D game (at least, the models are pretty complex in geometry and shaders), there is likely to be time sensitive code in there. I’d be very surprised if the developers weren’t using the NDK. 

[sub68]

46 minutes ago, Zodiark1593 said:

*is wondering how the heck my grandfather’s iPhone 4S was able to download Minecraft and Futuremark if no 32-bit code is allowed on App Store* 

as I have a iphone 4 and a 6s

I really need to get new batteries for both of them

my iphone 4 battery the connector broke

my 6s is draining way to fast ( got it in October) 

[TomvanWijnen]

4 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

There are absolutely 0 32Bit apps on the Apple App Store. The Play Store might have a bunch of relics, but there isn't a single bit of 32Bit code that gets downloaded onto any iOS device. 

That's simply wrong. My parents both have an iPad 4 that they use all the time, it definitely still can download apps.

 

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

Or they could have bought a better device in the first place, it's such a pity that Android phones don't come with a "warning, throw this phone out in 18 months" expiry date.

Not everyone wants to or even can spend more on a phone. And, what do you mean with that expiry date? Just because something doesn't get (useless) updates, doesn't suddenly mean it's unusable.

[Curious Pineapple]

12 minutes ago, TomvanWijnen said:

Not everyone wants to or even can spend more on a phone. And, what do you mean with that expiry date? Just because something doesn't get (useless) updates, doesn't suddenly mean it's unusable.

In the Apple world a 2 year old phone is too old to bother with, even though Apple gets so much praise for offering software updates for 5 years, on devices that are too old to bother with, but at least they get updates.

 

Most people use a device for 2 years and get a new one on a contract. Apple only support devices for so long because it allows people who can't or won't spend so much on a new device to still get into the ecosystem. As soon as the updates stop, Apple devices are worthless.

[Bombastinator]

20 hours ago, TofuHaroto said:

People still play this game ?!

People haven’t had their 2016 android phones lose update anyway? I’ve got an earlier phone, but it’s not android.

[Haro]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

People haven’t had their 2016 android phones lose update anyway

My old 2015 (Samsung mind you ) got updates for 3 years 

Weird huh 

[Colonel_Gerdauf]

About the dropping of 32-bit support; bloody took them long enough.