"The Silph Road's APK mine of v0.73.1 is complete! A long-awaited performance overhaul and the Safari Zone! (Eyes out for Exclusive Raids - They're likely ready to roll!)"

#PokemonGO: To the thousands of new faces who have joined the Silph Road recently: welcome! Please check out our top stickied post and sidebar to learn what the Silph Road is all about. The Silph Road team's long-running APK teardown series examines the new code changes introduced with the latest APK for hints at what's to come in Pokemon GO. Glad to have you with us on the Road!Why do APK's always seem to begin propagation when the Silph Road team is traveling. /proceeds to buy the damn in-flight wi-fi on another red-eye I was hoping to sleep onAfter major performance glitches with Pokemon GO v0.71.0, Niantic pulled the APK from the Play Store, and stopped propagation from the Apple App Store, pending fixes. Remember, v71.0 brought a new incubator type, Gen III species names, and major updates to the Exclusive Raid mechanics - none of which has yet appeared in-game!To patch this bugged update, minor version update 0.73.1 is rolling out now. Under the hood, it's clear there's been a significant, aggressive effort to improve performance.Let's dive in, travelers!1. Sprite CachingWhile we haven't had time to run tests and clarify the implications of this change, it appears that certain sprites and icon assets may now be being cached locally.Whether or not this means all sprites now get cached, or whether this change is active or not is still unclear.There have been consistent reports that data usage has increased in recent updates. This may help to alleviate that issue.2. Rendering Quality LevelsFor the first time, we've observed new code designed to detect and optimize for low memory environments.It appears that if your device lacks the appropriate system memory for the full experience, the following may now possibly be kicking in:"expensive operations" will be avoideda low memory graphics modea low texture modeNot much is known about the different quality levels at this point, but lower graphics levels may be able to be manually entered via battery-saver mode.3. New Debugging Tools Specifically for Memory LeaksNiantic has long had an in-game debugging tool for internal uses.This update brough new debugging tools specifically designed to examine memory leaks and stack overflow errors:PromptForStackOverflowCauseStackOverflowPromptForMemoryPressureInfinitelyIncreaseMemoryPressureHopefully this new tool has helped with this update and in future updates to help catch these issues more aggressively.4. Overhauled GAME_MASTER IntakeInterestingly, a significant overhaul took place regarding how the GAME_MASTER file is retrieved by the client. This may be due to the increasing length of the file, or simply to standardize the component in preparation for future IPs, but that's a complete stab in the dark. Regardless, the APK now has new methods to download, read, and batch/compare GAME_MASTER files.5. Many Niantic.Platform Namespace upgradesNiantic has continued to proactively rename components under their platform namespace schema. This time, the following were named thus:Niantic.Platform.Inventory - perhaps dealing with items ownedNiantic.Platform.Auth.Plugins.Internal - a new, centralized authentication tokenNiantic.Platform.GameMaster - the more robust GAME_MASTER reader, as mentioned aboveThis continues to hint towards Niantic building for future IPs....6. Asset OptimizationsA few graphics were optimized, particularly the PokeCoin (which had its resolution halved).Non-Performance Updates7. The Safari Zone EventA new badge and event PokeStop graphic have appeared in the new assets - hinting that the delayed Safari Zone event (which sounded like a lot of fun) is still on deck!And that's the very end of my laptop battery, and there's no outlets on this flight!Keep an eye out for Exclusive Raids, travelers. The fact that these weren't tweaked in this update says a lot. We wouldn't be surprised if these were ready to flip on with a server-side change.Might Mewtwo be on our doorstep? :)- Executive Dronpes - via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2gsLp22