"The Silph Road's In-Depth APK Teardown of v0.129.1 is complete! Bug fixes, new support chat in-game, Facebook friends, reverse sorting, geofencing, Burmy forms, Power-Up Punch, and get ready for a Winter 2018 event! Happy Thanksgiving, travelers!"

#PokemonGO: Happy Thanksgiving, travelers!Thanks to Dronpes Jr waking up at 2am, we get a surprise Silph Road teardown in the wee hours of Thanksgiving holiday in the US. :| But it's a good thing, because the latest APK has a few clues up its sleeve!Version 0.129.1 began a staged rollout on Android a few hours ago, and barring major issues is expected to continue rolling out later today.Niantic shared the following release notes for this build:You will be able to connect to your Facebook account to add Facebook friends who are Pokémon GO Trainers (and have also chosen to enable this feature) to your Friend ListYou will be able to reverse-sort your Friend List and Pokémon StoragePokémon caught prior to the current calendar year will now have a unique indicatorVarious bug fixes and performance updatesWhich is a pretty verbose group of release notes, for Niantic. We have also found several other notable clues and additions to cover - so let's dive in so we can get a little sleep before Turkey Day!Back-end & Platform UpdatesFirst, some back-end additions and changes:1. Facebook FriendsAs announced in the release notes (and hinted in prior APKs), Facebook friend list integration is here. Connecting a Facebook account and authorizing the feature will apparently display a list of (Facebook) friends playing GO in some screens, and may even suggest adding them as Pokemon GO friends.We're curious to see whether this will help folks looking for Raiding buddies discover friends they didn't know were playing!2. HelpShift: In-Game Support ChatIn what may be an attempt to reduce the load on Niantic's outsourced support team, a new in-game support chat system has been added. HelpShift has been apparently selected as the tool of choice, who's Unity SDK offers features like real-time support chat, optional push notifications for received support replies, and auto-article suggestions for common questions.The initial support categories we've noticed are: bugReports, loginHelp, and banHelp. These may have been added to help automate common inquiries like forgetting a password or gathering info on well-known bugs.One hope we have for the system is that bug reporting through the support chat may gather device info and provide Niantic improved telemetry and analytics on glitches and bugs.3. Geofence SupportThis is an interesting one! Support for 'geofencing' has been added in several areas of the APK. Geofences, for those unfamiliar, are artificial boundaries that, when crossed, can trigger an event in-game. Examples would be sending push notifications to everyone near a Niantic event in a specific city.We see support for the: Entrance, Exit, Dwell, and Visit geofence-related events.Keep an eye out for future features or notifications leveraging these capabilities, travelers!Bug Fixes & Quality of Life UpgradesSeveral fixes and QoL upgrades were added this round as well:4. Reverse Sorting!As promised, Pokemon storage and the Friends list can now be reverse sorted. And we believe the preference is remembered next time! This is a nice little time-saver when looking for older Pokemon to trade.5. Push Notification Tweaks?Keep an eye on your push notifications - particularly in regards to weekly fitness rewards. We see indicators of new distance notifications and a new weekly notification at the minimum, and possible other tweaks as well.6. POI Submission FixesWe also see what appears to be fixes for the POI submission screens; specifically what looks like the screens involving the mapping process of POI submission. We can't predict whether POI submissions will re-open (despite the backlog issues), but it appears the bug that caused their recent closure may be being resolved!New & Upcoming FeaturesOk. You made it through the nuts and bolts - now it's time to get HYPED!7. "Old Pokemon" IndicatorNow Pokemon caught in the prior year(s) will show an indicator of their catch date on their details screen. This and the new 'captured date' on the trading screen are handy when attempting to trade for Lucky Pokemon.The fact that any Pokemon older than the current calendar year are being highlighted (and referred to as oldPokemon in the APK) bears the questions ... is there an increased Lucky rate for all these Pokemon?8. Sinnoh Stone SupportAlong with the recent launch of the Sinnoh Stone, a new item dictionary entry (ITEM_GEN4_EVOLUTION_STONE) has now been codified. We expect this was just a formality at this point.9. Burmy Forms AddedWhen Gen 4 was added in v0.123.1, most Pokemon 'forms' were added to the APK's form dictionary. Burmy was an exception, however, and was missing its 3 "Cloaks:" plant, sandy, and trash. These have now been added alongside its evolution (Wormadam's) which were included prior:BURMY_PLANTBURMY_SANDYBURMY_TRASHThis may have been a simple oversight before, considering Wormadam's inclusion. (As an aside, wouldn't it be amazing if the geofencing functions above somehow helped determine which cloak Burmy was using?)10. Upcoming Winter Event: WINTER_2018We don't know much - but evidence of a Winter event has been included in the APK! Notably, in 2016 a HOLIDAY_2016 event was added, but no winter/holiday event was added last year in 2017 to the APK. Basically, we know virtually nothing other than we're going to party like it's Winter 2018. So iron your dancin' pants.11. New Move: Power-Up Punch!Finally, the move Power-Up Punch has been officially added to the APK's move dictionary!It's the latest addition, after the 17 new moves (from Skull Bash to Razor Shell) were added in v0.123.1:V0319_MOVE_POWER_UP_PUNCHWe predict this will likely be a special move for Lucario. (Though it's still possible it may be given to another species!)And that's it for v0.129.1!We hope you have a fantastic Thanksgiving Day, travelers. We're grateful for all of you - especially the countless good travelers who answer questions and help others learn here on the Road. And those who help provide Silph League check-ins at meetups around the world. We're coming up on nearly 3 years on the Road (which is pretty hard to believe) and it's been a phenomenal journey thanks to everyone around the world who continues to travel with us.We hope you take a moment to appreciate the memorable takeaways you've gained from your time on the Road and playing Pokemon GO in your communities. We've seen this game unite folks of different backgrounds, ages, skill-levels, and cultures - despite the bumps in the road, it's been amazing....And let me break us out of our moment of reflection to say we've finally got a site overhaul staging to launch on the Silph Road's website. Just as soon as the tryptophan wears off!Travel safe,- Executive Dronpes - via /r/TheSilphRoad https://ift.tt/2QbS2pG