Pokemon GO has stayed strong in giving players the chance to go out and become a Pokemon Master, and while the app has been accessible for quite some time on a number of smart devices, the end is nigh for a few older generation devices, starting with Apple products.
In an update from developer Niantic, the company announced that support for older Apple devices for Pokemon GO will be phased out at the end of February 2018. Specifically, this will be applied to iOS devices that are incapable of upgrading to iOS 11 (the latest major OS update for the platform), with Niantic explicitly mentioning devices such as the iPhone 5 and 5c models.
Niantic explained that this change “is a result of improvements to Pokemon GO that push the application beyond the capabilities of the operating systems on such devices,” and those with a device that will be incompatible with the game after February 28th, 2018 will need to either upgrade or switch to a different, more recent smart device.
Given that the game launched in summer 2016, it’s expected that the more recent versions of the game might exceed older generation hardware, and might give an incentive for those players on older smart devices the incentive to upgrade to a new device. This includes some of the new features added to the game, such as the recently-added AR+ mode in the title.
Pokemon GO is available now on iOS and Android.