DJI GO 4+

The app is well designed visually but isn’t very robust. The app crashes often whether downloading or deleting videos. Frustrating to use.

This review concerns the DJI GO app for Osmo Mobile 2. At the time of this writing, the Mobile 2 is a discontinued device. I bought mine less than two years ago. It’s in perfect condition, and in fact works very well as a camera stabilizer, which is what it does.

But the hardware is absolutely useless, or very close to it, without this app. And although it’s here or the app store, it doesn’t work with my phone and device any longer, though it did.

before I get further into this, the point of this review is to talk about the way that DJI lets customers down. If you like a company that makes the easiest way to deal with their non-functioning products to fill up landfills with perfectly functional devices that cost over $100 and have basically zero use, because they neglect key link in the chain, by all means go with DJI. Expect to be screwed, because they will, based on my experience.

I say in the title this is fraudulent, and I want to explain what I mean. It makes no difference to me how good your hardware is, if the software won’t let me use it, or won’t let me use the key features that I bought it for. It’s like selling someone a car, and neglecting to mention that the gas tank is made of papier-mâché, and will simply stop holding gas after a few miles of driving. Sure, it’s a car, but if the thing it’s completely dependent on is going to no longer function, AND there’s no fix, AND they continue to provide the completely useless software, then that constitutes a grossly unfair way to treat customers.

It’s not as though I’m expecting upgrades. I just want the damn this to function. The thing that doesn’t work is that when I try to connect bluetooth between the iPhone and the device, the software can’t see that the connection is made, and refuses to pen the part of the app that allows you to actually access the camera.

This functioned, while the device was a current product. Now, it doesn’t. What would one reasonably conclude? Deleting and reinstalling the app didn’t help. Restarts didn’t help. No firmware updates exist, or at least are accessible, so that route is closed.

I use my unit to work with kids in severely underprivileged areas, or at least I did, in one of the South East Asia’s poorest countries. It was a stretch to get the budget to buy this thing, and when we get stuff, we have to take care of it, and we have to make it last.

This company is just too clearly at the core of the problem of corporations taking a slave-master attitude towards their customers. You have no recourse, you have no help. In fact, the button that you finally get to when searching their support site appears to not even be connected: clicking it repeatedly does nothing.

The company makes ridiculous demands that you register, just to configure your device, not even to use it, or store data. And when the app is first loaded, there’s an opt-in screen that will only let you proceed if you agree to basically expose tons of location data to them. So if you value your privacy, and after you’ve paid a lot of money for the device, then you get to find out that your can’t use it except under what most reasonable people would see as onerous, one-sided, non-optional conditions. Again, fraudulent to represent that you’re selling a product for use, and only afterwards reveal tha that use is conditional on these kinds of demands to share personal data, most especially location data.

Is there any chance a company that provides such an unbelievably mediocre, even degrading user experience would change their ways, and start treating customers reasonably? I very much doubt it. Honestly, the unit I have is really a great piece of engineering – but only the unit in my memory, back when this company allowed me to use it. Now they’re effectively forcing me to throw it away, and it would seem, deliberately providing sabotaged software to enforce that. I think it’s terrible, and I think this company should be deeply ashamed of its cynical practices.

I strongly urge you to think twice before buying anything from DJI, based on my experiences.

Time to start working on some major fixes! I wouldn’t have bought the stabilizer if I knew it would crash after 5 seconds every time I open it. It’s garbage