Nintendo Pokemon Go Plus Release Date, Price and Specs – CNET

You want to be the very best, like no one ever was. But you don’t want to be nose-deep in your phone instead of interacting with the world.

That’s why Nintendo devised another way to play the uber-popular Pokemon Go: a $35 or £35 wearable gadget that can quietly alert you to nearby Pokemon. (We don’t have an Australian price yet, but the UK price converts to about AU$60.)

It’s called the Pokemon Go Plus, and it sounds dead simple to use. You wear it like a wristband, or pin it to your pocket, purse, lapel or sleeve. It pairs with your compatible iPhone or Android phone over a Bluetooth Low Energy connection, and connects to your Pokemon Go app.

The Pokemon Go Plus.

Nintendo

Then, instead of constantly pulling out your phone to scan for Pokemon, you just walk around town like a normal human being. Whenever you’d normally stumble across a Pokemon, the Go Plus will light up instead.

Press that light-up button, and — without needing to pull out your phone — the game will automatically throw a Poke ball to try to catch it for you. (Just so long as you’ve caught a Pokemon of that type before.)

It should work for PokeStops, too: if you walk past one, the device should light up and vibrate. Press it, and you can harvest the same items (balls, potions, berries) that would have been waiting for you if you’d activated it from within the game.

Humans of Pokemon Go
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Sound good? Thing is, the Pokemon Go craze may be over (or drastically smaller) by the time you get your hands on Nintendo’s gadget. Originally, the device was supposed to ship in late July, but Nintendo pushed it back to September.

In the meanwhile, you’ll just have to keep on using your phone.

Or a smartwatch, if Nintendo and the game’s developer Niantic stop cracking down on third-party apps. I used Pokedetector for my Pebble watch (also on Android Wear) and it seemed to work reasonably well — until the app got pulled from the Google Play Store.

We’re looking forward to checking out the Pokemon Go Plus in the weeks ahead.

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