If you’re excited for Pokémon GO, you might be interested to know that you’ll need a pretty fat battery in your phone to run it. According to reports from players of the newly released game, the game has very heavy battery usage, which is making a lot of players run out of battery fast. According to CyberShack (via Kotaku), the drain is chiefly coming from the game’s heavy use of GPS and the rear-facing camera.
Developers Niantic aren’t blind to this. They’ve specifically mentioned on their official page that “some devices may experience battery drain while playing Pokémon GO for prolonged periods of time.” They’re also working on a solution to this problem, so the drain may go down in a future patch for the game. There’s apparently an option in the game’s settings to save batteries, but we don’t yet have reports on how much help that can be. Check out few tweets below what players say about battery drain issue on Pokemon GO.
https://twitter.com/Gazunta/status/750627892539777024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Pokemon Go killed my phone battery in two hours. I can use my phone an entire day before it needs to be charged normally…
— Peachi (@Peachibon) July 6, 2016
https://twitter.com/WalnutSoap/status/750712111702106113?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/macleanbrendan/status/750588960460640258?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Gonna need an extra battery pack just for Pokemon GO
— Gavin Bates (@GavinBates_) July 7, 2016
Good ways to conserve a bit of your battery life include reducing screen brightness and turning the sound off. Or, well, not playing the game, but I suppose that’s not much of an option if you’ve been super excited to play the game. Just remember to get yourself a portable charger, or return to home base often enough.
What’s the battery drain like over on your end? Let us know in the comments below. Still, don’t have the game? Get the APK over here. If you’d rather download it for iOS, go here. Also, check out installation errors on Pokemon GO. Be sure to keep an eye on our ongoing Pokémon GO coverage to stay updated on the game.