New Ingress Items Coming

The next version of the Ingress Scanner to hit your phones & tablets will be 1.83.1. A big jump from the 1.81.0 you're running now, and boy does it show.  FEV Games did a tear-down of the new version and found a bunch of both newly- and not-quite-yet-released features.

Key Capsules: Special capsules that can only hold keys.  Keys in these capsules do not count toward your 2,000 item inventory limit.  I repeat.  Keys in these capsules do not count toward your 2,000 item inventory limit.

and the op planners of the world did rejoice!

Capsule Loading Organizer: The interface for loading items into capsules is now organized the same way inspecting your main inventory is organized.  You select an item type (Weapons, Resonators, Mods, Power Cubes, Portal Keys, Media. maybe?  Does anyone actually ever put media in a capsule?), and if you select keys, you choose to sort them by distance or by title.  My friends and I have fantasized about a lot of things to make handling keys easier: tags, folders, etc.  This isn't anything so 21st century as that, but it's still a hell of an improvement over what we have now.

Portal Upgrades: These apparently boost the hacking output of a portal.  They go into a dedicated upgrade slot on the portal, and based on rarity have variable rates of output boost and variable expiration times.  I know some bars that will be sporting these soon!

In-Game Store: A store in the game where you can buy items.  Everyone will start off with 10 credits.  It's not clear yet how you will get more credits, if actual IRL money can be used or if credits are awarded for in-game accomplishments.  Or some combination.

Big changes have been coming, we knew, since the spin-out of Niantic from Google.  This is at least the first wave.

Thanks for the teardown analysis, FEV Games.