‘Pokémon Go’ Will Drop Support for Older 32-Bit Android Phones

If you or your kid has gotta catch ’em all, you might need to get a new Android phone to do so. Beginning with an update in August, the ultra-popular Pokémon Go mobile AR game will drop support for Android-based phones using the 32-bit version of the operating system. That’s going to be a headache for those on older devices.

Pokémon Go developer Niantic is quick to point out that this probably won’t affect you if you’re using a phone you bought in 2015 or later. HTC released the first 64-bit Android phones in 2014, and due to the ubiquity of Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek processors, the mobile industry made the transition much more quickly than computers had a decade before. Google itself dropped support for 32-bit-only Android apps last year, so you probably can’t find any new devices on the shelf that would be affected by this.

Still, that’s going to be a blow for a portion of players, especially those ultra-dedicated Pokemon trainers who use multiple accounts and devices to cheat the game. Hang on a second, I need to play a tiny violin for the latter.

Source: Niantic via 9to5Google