Trainer "chat" function?

I don't have a link but read that in an interview they said something to the effect of the lack of in-game communication was intentional. Their rationale was that there are a wide variety of chat apps, with different corners of the globe having popular preferences that may not be the same in other areas of the planet. They said they didn't want to force users into using a chat system that may not be as preferable to their existing one.

Personally I think that response is a bunch of company fluff to hide their laziness or unwillingness to develop one behind. Some method of communicating with other trainers in-game could make for a better experience. One of the concerns people have is that this could lead to toxic communities to become worse. I think if chat was kept to pre-defined messages it could mitigate this.

I think a chat system would be a bit much for the game, as in getting messages could cause slowdown or while checking them you might miss a pokemon. That or you could get repeatedly spam messaged by people on it about trades/friendship/battles.

It could be them being lazy and not wanting to implement it, but we dont know.

A sort of premade text send option with messages on cooldown might work, but people would still complain about how it limits what they can do/say to eachother

Is it truly that necessary to coordinate anyway? All you're missing on is some pretty meaningless exp, even without lucky eggs the friendship increases give an exorbitant amount of exp compared to anything else in the game and make leveling to 38 a breeze compared to what it used to be.

In case you can't coordinate, you know their friend code and they have sent you a gift, you can open it when you think they aren't online, delete them and then send them a new request. As long as their game wasn't open, they won't get the friendship increase and can then choose their own time to get it when they re-add you. Or you can try communicating via your buddy name, like "UFBF at21PST"

Dude, you can talk! Sent this guy presents for days and he opened them all never returned one and then de-friended me! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!