Prime data usage and poor cell service

Howdy. Many of us live in rural areas with spotty or poor cell service where entire towns can't even get 4G service. My phone is often bouncing between 3g and 1 bar of 4g.

With Redacted, this is not an issue. The app opens everywhere and is very forgiving about losing data service and getting it back again.

Prime, even the latest versions, is much more data intense and very unforgiving when you lose signal...even for a moment.

I find many locations in small towns where Prime won't open or freezes up due to poor or lost signal, yet if I switch to Redacted I'm good to go. And Prime won't even open in many rural parks or nature areas that have portals.

It's fairly obvious that the portal photos that display in Comms, in the key carousel, in remote portal views all contribute to the larger amount of data that Prime is trying to pull down from the server. There's probably many other things happening in the background that contribute to poor network performance on poor cell service with Prime too.

Please optimize the data usage in Prime and make it more forgiving or better able to recover from temporary network hickups. Also, an option setting to toggle off the loading of portal photos would help immensely.

Please consider the rural players and those in developing countries. Heck, all these things would make Anomaly play and IFS play better too when urban cell services get overloaded.

Comments

  • I would love to see a low data mode toggle implimented into Prime!

    In addition to the points you already addressed, this would help out those players whom have data limits on their cellular plans to help lessen the impact of data usage by Prime.

  • jsylvisjsylvis ✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2019

    Prime is completely unusable on poor cell data, such as encountered in remote locations used for anchoring (or blocking) BAFs.


    Edit: I don't know how to quantify this other than Redacted will eventually let XMPs through whereas Prime doesn't even reliably load on low cell signal, let alone fire/deploy.

  • i would like to see the pictures removed from opening or displaying at all unless you actually click on the portal either from the key or the portal itself.

  • Don't worry about remote field anchors - the platform is evidently shared with Pokemons and during last 2 months we observed lots of spoofers, They are not constrained by app's hunger for data bandwidth - their couches have excellent network connection...

    And because it seems that all they need is to follow speed restrictions, they are not being banned despite multiple reports.

  • GhimokGhimok ✭✭✭

    I did some tests yesterday using Prime 2.29 in a town with mostly 3g service. Prime failed to open 3 out of 3 tries die to network failure. Redacted scanner opens every time in that location from past experience.

    Connected phone to WiFi in the same spot and Prime opens. I turned wifi off while Prime was open and was able to play using 3g signal, albeit very slowly. One of the times I tested this specific scenario Prime closed as I was turning off my wifi...


    As others have mentioned in posts about cell service, I think on Reddit, the US 3g network is being dismantled as the 5g network is being built. This means that many rural areas in the US will only have 1x service. Prime will not open in 1x service and you can't play on Prime with 1x service. Redacted scanner function properly (albeit slowly) on 1x service.

  • Did some testing last night in 2.30 version of Prime. Still seeing issues with opening Prime client in poor cell service conditions.

  • mortuusmortuus ✭✭✭✭✭

    I dont understand why prime acts so bad when network is a little unstable.. why ? it should use less data then redacted if optimized good..

  • I live in a rural area & twice now I’ve made the mistake of trying to upload a portal submission in a low cell area. The game just hangs & I have to force close & restart it. Please give us a low data option somehow. It’s turning me off trying to create or visit remote portals. I’d be scared to see how much cost it would be to use Prime on a sat modem. Yikes!

  • On my wifi, in downtown Portland, Oregon, Prime takes a full 15 minutes to load, if I turn off wifi, it still takes 5 minutes but loads faster, which negates the purpose of wifi for me. I have a high speed connection; whereas if I open redacted, it takes barely 5 seconds to load and I am able to play immediately without issues. Since any minute now I will be on Android 10, and ingress auto bans people on 10 who use redacted, what is the actual Niantic response to the fact that prime has severe networking issues and barely functions?

  • Niantic tell you to clear your cache, and reinstall the app, then ignore you.

    Everyone else will tell you to buy a new phone.

    I'm only playing for uniques and missions now, but the dodgy connection issues have even put me off doing banner missions in case I lose connection on mission 47 of a 48 mission banner.

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