Playing Pokemon Go regularly not likely to drain cell phone resources

Pokemon Go captivated millions of people worldwide this summer, who have used up a lot of their personal time and resources.

The popularity of Pokemon Go has made some people wonder how much playing the game would tax particular resources – cellular phone data plans and a phone's rechargeable battery.

UNL's Qiben Yan, assistant professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and his student recently studied how the game affects battery power and data usage.

With most data plans allowing more than two gigabytes of usage each month, Yan said, even those who play the game for an hour or more a day have little reason to be worried.

"My student walked around campus, played Pokemon Go for an hour and used up about 10 megabytes of data. If you played eight hours a day, like a full-time job, you probably would use about 80 megabytes," Yan said. "If you play five days a week at that rate, you'd use 400 megabytes and over a month, that would be about 1.6 gigabytes."

Verizon Wireless recently estimated that the average customer uses less than two gigabytes per device in any billing period, and most data plans allow for at least two gigabytes of free usage per month. Yan noted that T-Mobile even introduced a data plan with higher limits and marketed it specifically to Pokemon Go players.

Yan, however, said frequent Pokemon Go users aren't likely to be in danger of being charged more money for exceeding data limits.

"If you're playing Pokemon Go eight hours a day, you probably won't have much time to do anything else," Yan said with a chuckle.

On the other hand, keeping your phone powered up while playing Pokemon Go isn't quite so easy.

The amount of data and battery power required to run Pokemon Go is greater than most other games, Yan said, due to the augmented reality technology that is utilized.

The game app utilizes augmented reality technology. While viewing their surroundings through a cell phone's camera, users "find" Pokemon creatures or are directed to those creatures "hiding" nearby.

Yan said technology uses power quickly and will require cell phone users to recharge more often, possibly leading to faster depletion of a battery's durability.

"It really chews up the power, especially on phones of older generations," said Yan. "After one or two hours of playing Pokemon Go, my iPhone 5 battery will be used up. But my phone is two or three years older than the new iPhones and the battery is probably not good enough for the game.

Even after almost two months since it was released in early January, the Pokemon Go craze hasn't waned much. Nearly 34 million people have downloaded the game in the U.S. and YouGov.com estimates that 30.8 million are still playing the game as of mid-August.

Yan is one of those devoted game players, when he can find the time.

"I play maybe 30 minutes a day. I don't have much time to play," Yan said. "When I'm working, I play when walking from the parking garage to my office. When I go to the Union to eat, I play then."

Even though he works in the Schorr Center for Computer Science and Engineering, located under the south stands at Memorial Stadium, Yan wasn't one of the 3,700 "hunters" who came to the stadium on July 14 looking for Pokemon. Yan, though, credits the game for keeping him motivated to enjoy the outdoors more often this summer.

"I have gone in the stadium looking for special Pokemon," Yan said. "It keeps me going outside and that's a good thing. I suspect that when it's winter in Lincoln, there will be less people getting outside and playing Pokemon Go."