Why 'Pokémon Go' Kills Your Smartphone's Battery Life

Pokémon GO has pretty much taken the world by storm since its release nearly two weeks ago. Not only has it grossed millions in revenue, but has entered mainstream pop culture in a weird variety of ways. One thing everyone notices, whether you're WWE CEO Vince McMahon encountering a Ghastly in WWE's gym or me taking my dog for a walk, is that Pokémon GO can easily zap battery energy away like it's nothing. If there is one easy answer to sum up why Pokémon GO uses so much battery, it's simple—it uses a lot of your smartphone capabilities, some of which you never see in other mobile games.

One of the big factors, for example, is GPS usage. Pokémon GO uses this heavily, since the main goal is to go outside and walk around in search of elusive pocket monsters.

"It's actually rather similar to Apple/Google Maps this way," Kyle Wiens, the CEO of gadget repair specialists iFixit, told Motherboard. "Both of those apps consume a lot of power as well. They're visually intensive, network intensive, and GPS intensive."

But it's not just GPS data that sucks up battery life. Most smartphones these days either have adjustments for phone brightness or have it automatically when going outside, and a bright screen commands more energy, and therefore more consumption. On top of all this, Pokémon GO also uses your smartphone's camera, which is a rarity.

"That is not something that is in a typical game" Jeff Yee, vice president of technology planning and partnerships of the US subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer ZTE, told Motherboard. "[Pokémon Go] is one of the first applications I can think of that use all of these components all at the same time".

One possible solution to all this might be to increase battery storage in future smartphones. After all, a game as successful as Pokémon GO is bound to unleash a wave of very similar titles, some which will probably use similar features that take up just as much space and consumption. Yee, however, says that it's not that easy

"That's the biggest challenge in our industry right now. Everyone wants a bigger battery," Yee said, noting that adding in a bigger battery plus normal phone components isn't the easiest task to accomplish. "It's difficult to increase to pack in more components and still keep it at a size that people expect that can fit into their pockets".

It's possible that future phones will have bigger, healthier batteries that can sustain games that uses a lot of smartphone capabilities. Taking a long walk down the park with Pokémon Go on will zap energy from your phone, but in the meantime there are methods to quell your battery's demise. Turning your brightness down, shutting off the AR feature whenever possible, and turning on the game's battery saver (which will darken the screen whenever you have your phone downward) are all great methods to combat energy drainage.