Solution for P4 range/battery life issues - Updated with Contact from DJI!

To all here, what a fantastic job reporting on your experience with the P4. I am so glad I spent time here before making my purchase. The idea of going directly to the CEO is genius. Let's hope he's responsive to the people that butter his bread. See my e-mail below for my story. I sent it to him today. I'll continue to monitor the forum and let's all hope DJI is the company that steps up to the plate and delivers what they are claiming to deliver.

Here's my e-mail:

Dear Mr. Wang,

I own (or owned) a DJI Phantom 3 Advanced drone. Got it for Christmas (a present to myself!). It was so impressive 2 other friends who tried my Phantom out also bought one.

Another friend who recently got married was considering getting a Phantom so he and his new bride could film their outdoor wedding and then have a nice time flying the drone afterward. At the same time the Phantom 4 was announced.

I enjoyed my Phantom Advanced so much (my 1st drone) and was so impressed by the quality, as soon as I saw the specs for the P4 I decided to give my P3A (and all the extra batteries and backpack I bought) to my friend and his wife as a wedding present and purchase the P4 upon availability.

However, I am a member of the Phantom Pilots forum. I started doing some reading to gain knowledge of the P4 prior to purchase. The forum is comprised of very enthusiastic drone pilots who have extensive experience and provide great insight into the hobby.

Unfortunately, the early feedback on the P4 is quite disappointing. A great majority of those who have bought and tested the P4 are reporting huge discrepancies in claimed capabilities versus actual results. Much lower battery life, much less range and unreliable performance of some features such as tap-to-fly and ActiveTrak are just a few of the early observations. I am inclined to believe what I am reading on this forum as those posting are very experienced and not prone to exaggeration or posting misleading information.

I was blown away by the performance of the P3A I bought. I thoroughly enjoyed it and my friend and his new bride are enjoying now. I was extremely excited to get a new P4 but now I have decided to put my purchase on hold until I am comfortable that it performs to the standards claimed in the advertising. Please don't disappoint your fans and customers by making false claims. Please make any necessary corrections to the P4 so it meets the claimed performance standards. If you do this I will be the first in line to buy it and promote it to friends and family. Until then, I'll hold off on any further support of DJI and their products.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

phattaildeuce


Sent from my iPad using PhantomPilots mobile app
Excuse me guys but, what do you think they'll do after these kind of emails? Recall all the p4 sold until now to make them better for what you expected? Or make another model like p4+ that follow the specs and make all the first buyers angry like hell? Who buy for first before wait some reliable reviews take this kind of risks. You know the way you leave but you don't know the way you get.

The truth is that from p2v+ to p3 the step has been huge. From p3 to p4 the step is small small small moreover for experts pilots that after the first excitement for the new features maybe won't use them anymore.

You've to live with this model until next one that maybe will be another huge step.
 
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GregSW - Exactly how long did you own a P3 ??
I have had a P3P about 2-3 months. Just haven't been able to fly it much until the last few weeks due to weather.

I am not an expert by any means. But when I look at my flight logs for my P3P and the P4, there is a difference for me. Being somewhat new, I bring it in when it hits the 30%. On the P3P, I got around 15-18 minutes before I would hit 30%. On P4, 20-22 minutes. So about 5 minutes difference.

For me, its not a big issue right now. I am not flying far away or pushing the drone. Still taking it nice and easy; mostly keeping it in sight, and just learning how to fly.

My issues with the P4 are a gimble squeaking sound. And it doesn't seem to stabilize as quick as my P3P when I let go of the sticks.
 
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I would expect them to be aware of the concerns and fix whatever they can via firmware updates.
If you don't think that companies pay attention to user complaints- especially to those at the top- and act accordingly then you are sorely mistaken. I have had direct email conversations with the CEO of Apple to this very effect and they have directly responded to the things that I communicated both in words and in action.


Excuse me guys but, what do you think they'll do after these kind of emails? Recall all the p4 sold until now to make them better for what you expected? Or make another model like p4+ that follow the specs and make all the first buyers angry like hell? Who buy for first before wait some reliable reviews take this kind of risks. You know the way you leave but you don't know the way you get.

The truth is that from p2v+ to p3 the step has been huge. From p3 to p4 the step is small small small moreover for experts pilots that after the first excitement for the new features maybe won't use them anymore.

You've to live with this model until next one that maybe will be another huge step.
 
I've already sent an email to Frank Wang. I've been flying DJI since the phantom fc40. In my experience every new model was a massive step in performance and capability. Of course, shell durability was never truly adressed until now. My initial impressions are that the shell truly is massively improved. Speed as well. Even phantom mode with sensors off is delivering me phantom 3 atti speeds. Now the bad. While the flight time overstatement is bad enough, the range reduction while marketing improvements in that exact area are gross misrepresentations. This just isn't right at all. Personally, I would have been quite content with the same phantom 4 with phantom 3 range, none of the tap to fly object tracking extra weight, complexity and expense, and a true representation of flight times. Dual IMU and compass are something we all welcome and rely on every day. But object tracking.... Today, while filming my dog and his best pal, had I concentrated more on hand flying for the filming, I honestly feel I could have gotten more footage than all the time spent with my index finger trying to get them back on object tracking. Regardless, what always brings most of us back to DJI is light bridge. This should have never, under any circumstances, been reduced this substantially. Not if they wanted to keep customers. While the phantom 4 is a far higher quality bird in fit and finish, the range must be adressed and fast because the phantom 3 got nowhere near this bad publicity after launch.
 
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I just received this:

Thank you for writing. Let me preface the below by saying we believe in our products and stand behind them. We do understand that they’re not for everybody. But the P4 is the best Phantom we’ve ever built. If you are dissatisfied with the Phantom 4, you should do what you think is right for you. I will not try to pressure you either way.

From our side, 28 minutes is not under ideal conditions. It’s a reasonable and accurate amount of flight time we arrived at based on facts after many, many months of flight. It would help to have more details about how and where you were flying and what the battery’s charge levels were at start and finish. There are too many variables for me to comment or address anything specific, and while the forums are often extremely helpful for the aerial enthusiast community, there’s also a lot that goes out on the forums that are not based on clear details or facts. Nobody has had the Phantom 4 in the air for longer than a few days at this point, so it’s important to do due diligence.

Also, on what are you basing the assertion that “t seems there has been about a 20-25% decrease in the power from the transmitter?” Who conducted what tests, where, using what equipment to measure the power? Compared to what? I’m not contesting what you’re saying. I’m merely noting that without those kinds of details, I have no way of evaluating accuracy or not.

If you have some more details to provide, I am happy to pursue this further.

Best,
naj
 
We are getting their attention! I have referred him to this forum - specifically the range and battery life threads. This is a senior VP at DJI. Crowd communication works!!!
 
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So is it possible to get the flight logs from every one and send them to DJI. That would only work If they really cared about what your complaints are. That may eliminate some of those variables. Maybe they got those flight times holding their P4 hi in the air while idling running in circles an going zoom zoom. I find it strange that DJI times and distance would be so far off, and just because it takes a better picture people shouldn't settle for 1 out of 3.
 
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Ok - I just got off the phone with my DJI VP contact. Their chief engineer is looking into this. They have promised me that they will be speaking to the engineers in China later today about this. This is working! The right people now know about this. Let's start seeing some firmware updates!
KEEP emailing [email protected] everyone. Keep at it!
They are DEFINITELY responding to the complaints of decreased RC output (range) and battery life decreases. KEEP the pressure up! It's not time to let off yet!
 
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Here's my email, sent separately to Mr. Wang and to Mr. Perry.

Dear ______,
I am the proud owner of a Phantom 3 Advanced that I purchased at launch last year. It has served me well and I have not had any serious issues with it. Nevertheless, I am excited about the prospects of the P4 and I really want to get one, but at this point I am delaying my purchase due to the negative publicity I have seen on several online forums. Many P4 owners are reporting that their flight times are falling FAR short of the advertised 28 minutes (most report they cannot even get 20 minutes before the battery gets really low). But even more importantly, I'm seeing lots of reports about the reduced power of LightBridge and therefore people are losing their video signal and RC signal far sooner than they did on their P3?? I would think the P4 should be at least as good, if not better, with LightBridge capabilities, but that is not what I'm reading anywhere out there.

So I really hope you guys can get these two issues fixed with the P4 or maybe on the next release (hopefully sooner than later). Once these two issues are addressed, I will be more than delighted to upgrade.
 
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Thank you all for continuing to send these letters to the decision makers at DJI!!!!
 
Did another back to back flight today. One is my phantom 3 advanced, November delivery (my third since first two cracked) with GL300B controller, the other is my phantom 4. Like always, the phantom 4 turned very good speeds in P mode with the newbie sensors off. But that's as good as it gets. The phantom 3 did a wonderful 2 km run over water where I had barely a glitch in FPV until crossing the 2 kilometer mark. Keep in mind that mine is a CE version with no windsurfers. Even though the bird was over water, there was a quarter mile of very dense housing. Altitude was 120 meters or 400 feet. At my other apartment in Italy, I'm right in front of the ocean and there I'll do 3 kilometers easy. Anyway, this was the best performance of my phantom 4 yet. Not quite as good as the old phantom 3, but the best performance yet. Of course, flying over water always helps. The phantom 4 was truly at its limits. The phantom 3 still had some FPV and I felt I could have repositioned the controller just right to go another 200 meters. But I turned around anyway because I figured there was no way that the phantom 4 was going to go that far. Sure enough if didn't. There was nothing more to milk out of the phantom 4. I had already tilted the controller just right to get that far and it was about to cut out. In fact, I did two attempts on the phantom 4. The first one lost me FPV for good. The flights are below where you guys can see.
 

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Here is the phantom 4. For those of you who wonder about settings and all that, keep in mind that I have over 200 FC 40 flights, another hundred and something on a 2 vision, over three hundred on a vision plus, about 320 on the phantom 3. So yeah, I had the antennas positioned correctly, picked the best FPV channel and all that jazz.

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Here is the phantom 3. For those of you who wonder about settings and all that, keep in mind that I have over 200 FC 40 flights, another hundred and something on a 2 vision, over three hundred on a vision plus, about 320 on the phantom 3. So yeah, I had the antennas positioned correctly, picked the best FPV channel and all that jazz.

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That is pretty cut and dry ! No doubt
 
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Here is the phantom 3. For those of you who wonder about settings and all that, keep in mind that I have over 200 FC 40 flights, another hundred and something on a 2 vision, over three hundred on a vision plus, about 320 on the phantom 3. So yeah, I had the antennas positioned correctly, picked the best FPV channel and all that jazz.

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do you mean 4 ?
 

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