Amra said:
The battery wasn't a snug fit either & requires far too much force to remove from compartment, very annoying & hard on my fingers.
For what it's worth, that's not particular to third party batteries. I purchased 2 genuine plus 1 as supplied batteries from a large reputable dealer in the UK and they are all incredibly difficult to remove without quite a lot of force. It seems they bind as the contacts locate so I'm not too bothered. As it's only a couple of weeks old I've assumed that DJI have tightened the tolerances since the reported problems with previous airframes.
Unless DJI can 100% guarantee that they can design their system so that no third party batteries can ever be used to start the props turning they have no right trying to block knock off batteries from being used. There will always be someone willing to buy third party batteries and if these things fail in flight the consequences can be catastrophic - and not just for the Phantom. While it is the owners responsibility to ensure that they use safe components on their aircraft, equally if the failure is down to DJI's inadequate propriety protection system then they are also to blame for any injuries that may occur. We aren't talking about ink cartridges or camera batteries we are talking about something that is essentially a missile once it looses power.
Could you imagine the reaction if the CEO of DJI turned round to someone who had been injured or the parents of someone who had been killed, to say '
sorry for your loss but please understand we had to design our software to detect and block third party batteries to protect our intellectual property and profit margins even if it meant that the engines stopped turning when it was hovering 1000' overhead of where your kids were playing"
If DJI want to reduce the use of third party batteries then they should sell their own batteries at a reasonable price and not the extortionate price that they currently retail for. I'm not advocating the use of unsafe copies in a model aircraft capable of flying at 1000' - I bought 3 genuine batteries in spite of their price but if there are cheaper alternatives available their will always be people who will buy them.
Is anyone really bothered that these things are modular, so called 'smart batteries' that light up to tell you how much charge they have in them and I'd be interested to know just how accurate these indications are and whether all the cells are being equally charged all the time.