For the first few days while the game was live (and a huge chunk of the beta period), the game worked as if you had a map. You could see Pokémon quite far away,

For the first few days while the game was live (and a huge chunk of the beta period), the game worked as if you had a map. You could see Pokémon quite far away, and it would tell you how far away it was with a resolution of 20m. Once this got taken out of the game, and replaced with nothing, people who depended on that feature kept wanting it back so much that they re-made it.