Choose your Eevee evolution and other Pokemon Go tips and tricks

It has just been confirmed on Reddit that if you want to decide which Eeveelution you get you can name your Eevee:

• Pyro for Flareon
• Sparky for Jolteon
• Rainer for Vaporeon

PSA: You need to close and reopen the game after changing the name and before evolving otherwise it won't always work. 

Personally I'd like the excitement of seeing what it will be but if you want to ensure you get your favourite Eeveelution then this is a sure way to do it! This easter egg is from the original anime where the Eevee brothers were named Rainer, Pyro and Sparky and owned those Eeveelutions. See the video proof on Reddit here, courtesy of /u/StrongScience62.

Gyms explained
Most people will already know a lot of this but I didn't find it very intuitive when I was starting out, so basically once you're level 5 you can take part in gym battles - at an enemy gym your goal is to take it over and make it your colour. You do this by lowering the prestige of the gym until the gym turns white, then the first person that puts a Pokemon into the gym captures it for their team.

The level of the gym shows how many Pokemon can be stationed at the gym, the leader of the gym is the one with the Pokemon that has the highest CP (combat power) in the gym.

Combat
While fighting another Pokemon you can:

• Tap the screen to attack
• Tap and hold to perform the special move
• Swipe left or right to dodge
• Swap the current pokemon (you'll take quite some damage)

Lower the prestige of a gym
You lower the prestige of a gym by fighting and winning against the defenders, once you're in range of a gym and click it you get a boxing glove icon at the bottom right, if you press it displays your 6 best pokemon based on health/CP, if you're happy with this then hit Go.

Fighting gym battles is real time rather than turn based, each time you tap the screen to attack you build up the blue bars and when you have enough blue bars to cast your special, you tap and hold the screen for about half a second while will register the special attack.

Friendly Gyms
At a friendly gym you can add Pokemon in order to reinforce it, but you won't be able to add any Pokemon if the gym is already full. When you have Pokemon in a gym you can get rewards from the shop. The Pokemon you add to the gym will be unavailable for other gym fights and you can't power up or evolve them. When they are defeated you get them back with 1hp, and you can only add full hp Pokemon to the gym. You can only put one Pokemon in a gym regardless of the level of the gym.

Raise prestige of a gym
You raise the prestige of a friendly gym by training, you choose one Pokemon to fight and then if you beat the Pokemon stationed in the gym the prestige will rise. Your pokemon will take damage from training but they do not faint or die.