Portal Submission Issues
Over the past two years while playing Ingress, I have devoted quite a bit of my time while playing to expanding the Portal Network by submitting portals in (primarily) rural areas in the Midwest in the United States. Most of these areas lack strong cell reception, which makes what I've been doing a tad more difficult.
Often, I can get the photos taken, fill out the information about the submission and am able to click submit with normally little difficulty. However, 9 times out of 10, unless I'm directly on top of a cell tower for my carrier, the image uploads time out, fail, or cause the entire app to crash, resulting in more time being spent trying to get these portals submitted than it takes to find them.
You'll say "well, there is a remote submission feature, use that instead!" And I agree, that was a step in the right direction, but it's still woefully inadequate when you're 50 miles from the nearest town on a hiking trail trying to submit a marker that is not visible on satellite view. I've lost count of how many rural submissions I have given up on because I don't have the time to climb a tree or drive 20 minutes to get a good enough cell signal for the submission to successfully go through.
Since I'm not one to sit and complain without having some form of a solution, I thought about it and came up with several, any one of which would make the efforts of agents like myself much more effective and efficient:
Idea 1)
Modify the remote submission feature to allow for direct input of a set of GPS coordinates as well as the satellite map.
Idea 2)
If my understanding is correct, based on the error messages that the app sends out when failing to submit a portal, the image uploads seem to be the problem. The idea here could be to use Wayfarer to submit the images separately.
Idea 3)
Add an option to save all the portal submission data from a submission in the memory of the device and allow the agent to upload it later, similar to how Portal Scans can be saved and uploaded at a later time. Would be as simple as adding an additional button to the Submit/Back screen at the "Why Is Your Submission Important?" screen.
Additionally, any of these features could be easily monetized, either via a monthly subscription or a one-time purchase (like bag and box space in PoGO or Key lockers in Ingress).
In conclusion, your entire product line is based upon the library, created (for free) by agents/trainers of Wayspots. Several of the major complaints in PoGO (and Ingress prior) were the low portal densities in rural areas. By making submissions in very rural areas accessible for the average agent/trainer, the overall value of your database will increase, and potentially lead to additional revenue streams for Niantic, depending on how the changes are handled. And the personal benefit to agents/trainers like myself who enjoy hunting for and submitting unidentified waypoints will be in time saved and frustration avoided from working super hard to reach several excellent candidates then only being able to submit one (or none of them) because of failed image uploads.
Comments
I've also lost many submissions. Saving for later and uploading when in a place with more data would be a good improvement.