POKEMON GO IV Calculators: Calcy IV vs Poke Genie, Which One Is For You?

A Calcy IV screen

POKEMON GO IV Calculators: Calcy IV vs Poke Genie, Which One Is For You?

There's quite a few debates or one-sided opinions about what's a good Pokemon GO IV checker out there. But for me, I have been using Calcy IV for a while, but then someone had me checking out Poke Genie and now I'm on the fence about which one to use. The one I've always been using and comfortable with or the new one that seems to also be pretty decent to use.

A Pokie Genie screen

I'm going to try and spell things out, so here we go. And remember, my experiences are on an Android phone, the system that allows screen shot apps to work where as screen shot overlays don't work on iPhone.

And don't forget that in the end, IV max bonuses may only account for, at most, an 8% advantage over 0% IV scores! So when your in-game adviser says something about not good in battle, it's a bit of a biased Niantic spin to have you chasing bigger and slightly better mons.

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For one, Calcy IV is not available for iPhones. Poke Genie has versions for both! Point to PG (1)!

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Calcy IV installed effortlessly...  Poke Genie made me work for it because I had issues with my first few tries of installing the app. Point to Calcy (2)!

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They both instantly show IVs or IV ranges. When you have a range, you can run the in-game appraisal system and both apps will see and apply the statements made by your adviser.

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They both rank the movesets and allow you to tinker with potential movesets, so you know if you want to use that Fast or Charge TM on your Pokemon.

But CI shows you a ton of info in its very first screen.

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Both have a Raid Boss rating system.*

*Beware Niantics suggested teams. Or at least know your Pokemon. I lost to a two-star raid boss, Nosepass, because of Niantic's idiotic team auto select/suggest system. Thanks Ni! I then used Calcy's Raid Boss suggestion and boom, smite it before the second mon went down.

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Calcy rates the species. Meaning it will show you, where on a scale a Pokemon ranks among all Pokemon. I was creating a Google Sheets spreadsheet just for this reason (LINK) but instead, I could look at my Charizard in Calcy IV and see its Species score is 73.2%. Or I can look at my Dugtrio and it has a 36.3% ranking... meaning it sucks in the scheme of things. I know we all knew this, but I thought it was a good example.

I can't find this option in Poke Genie and it's a good one... Point to CI (3).

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When you look at your team appraiser's opinions, both apps, when run the right way, will automatically record what is reported. Poke Genie is pretty flawless with this, while Calcy IV seems to run into snags at times when it tries to run reptitively on appraisals. Point to PG (2).

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For the most part both apps agree on the overrated IV scores but every now and then, they'll differ by a point or two.

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I can't find the much vaunted battle simulator in the PG app that I've heard about, but in some round-about fashion, I found in CI where you can pick a mon and it shows an attack team. Can I repeat that easily? No.

But if I'm approaching a raid and open the boss window, CI will see the boss and calculate a battle team for me. Point to CI, but because PG also has a battle simulator, I'm not giving the point to CI yet. CI will also tell you if you can beat the boss or not... a very important piece of the pie!

It seems that the company behind PG has not yet released the battle simulator for Android, hence, why I can't find it! So even though they have released to Android without a complete software workup, we won't ding them for it. Or should we?

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CI has a "duel rating."  PG does not.

CI's duel rating takes the combination of all the stats of a pokemon, looks at its move set DPS and calculates the damage this pokemon will do in a scuffle.

Point to CI (4).

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PG hangs or locks up on me every now and then when I try to backward-arrow back to where I was. CI has never had any operational issues. Point to CI (5).

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CI has a bunch of options for listing mons, but it's not incredibly intuitive. I suppose I could look up how to or what to do for certain aspects of their features, but most apps, when designed well, don't need instructions.

PG also has various ways to look at and list mons, and it keeps a database, like CI does, of who you've scanned and it's easily retrievable. Very intuitive.

Point to PG (3).

Note: CI does have a save option but I don't see how it can be of any help. I can't bring up the listing. And if it is possible, it ain't intuitive enough to figure out, though recently I have sort of figured it out and in a round-about fashion, I have been able to sort and list my inventory.
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To this point Calcy IV has 5 points vs Poke Genie, with 3.

While I was running this test on my Android device, PG hung up on me three times and each time I was forced to clear its cache, and thus, the scan inventory.

I think Poke Genie is a good product for the platform it's meant to be on, an iPhone/Apple product but as far as Android is concerned, I'm sticking with Calcy IV. It's an excellent, simple to use app with the basic operations and with enough digging around, I think all the other features will work good too.

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