DJI-Apple partnership leads to Phantom 4 drone training sessions inside Apple Stores

AppleInsider

To prepare for the upcoming launch of the Phantom 4 flying camera drone, representatives from DJI have visited select Apple retail stores and given hands-on training sessions to the company's employees.

Romeo Durscher, director of education at DJI, conducted a demo of the Phantom 4 at Apple's Palo Alto, Calif., store, showing employees the capabilities of the next-generation drone.

Apple has partnered with DJI to be the exclusive retail partner for the Phantom 4 at launch. Training sessions will help Apple employees better understand the product for potential buyers.

A DJI representative told AppleInsider that the training sessions were held at "select stores," but didn't indicate how many of them took place. The Phantom 4 will debut at over 400 Apple Stores next week, on March 15.

At a press event earlier this month, DJI's director of strategic partnerships, Michael Perry, explained that most of his company's customers already use Apple products. The company's prosumer-focused line of Phantom drones integrate tightly with Apple's iOS ecosystem, allowing users to view and even control their drone via an iPhone or iPad.

The company's latest model, the Phantom 4, is faster (20 meters per second), flies longer (28 minutes), and includes new obstacle avoidance and object tracking systems. The $1,399 flying camera captures 1080p high-resolution video at 120 frames per second.

For more, see AppleInsider's first look at the DJI Phantom 4.

tenly

This description doesn't do justice to the Phantom 4. 20 metres per second is approx 45 miles per hour.  I encourage anyone interested in purchasing a drone to look at some of the YouTube videos posted by DJI themselves.  The object avoidance and object tracking capabilities are game changers if they work as advertised - and the 4K video is superb and super smooth thanks to the gimbal.  If you are producing a video at 1080p - shooting at 4K gives you the capability to use digital zoom (more than 3x I think) in post processing and still have crystal clear 1080p footage - or shoot native 1080p at 240 frames per second and slow it down to 1/4 speed without any loss of clarity!

I own 2 of DJI's previous model (the Phantom 3).  I loved the P3 - until they announced the P4 that is!  The Phantom 3 had what I thought was phenomenal range - able to fly anywhere within a 2km (1.24 miles) radius from the remote control while sending back live 720p video to an attached iOS device...but the Phantom 4 blows that away too!  The new Phantom 4 has a range of 5km (over 3 miles!)

I'm not affiliated with DJI in any way shape or form.  I'm just a super happy customer that can't wait to try out the new Phantom 4

Here's the YouTube link to the official DJI video introduction of the Phantom 4...  Youtube also hosts plenty of spectacular videos that people have taken with their phantom 3 at up to 4K video resolution.

edited March 2016

dacloo

It's great to see these technological changes, and DJI is certainly ahead of the game. Still, drones worry me. Just the sheer accessibility of it, I fear accidents are going to happen in urbanized areas. And it's a matter of time someone safely flies one of these drones into a crowd, charged with explosives.

nolamacguy

dacloo said:

It's great to see these technological changes, and DJI is certainly ahead of the game. Still, drones worry me. Just the sheer accessibility of it, I fear accidents are going to happen in urbanized areas. And it's a matter of time someone safely flies one of these drones into a crowd, charged with explosives.

accidents are a part of life. accidents kill thousands of people annually but we got over it for cars. 

roake

nolamacguy said:

dacloo said:

It's great to see these technological changes, and DJI is certainly ahead of the game. Still, drones worry me. Just the sheer accessibility of it, I fear accidents are going to happen in urbanized areas. And it's a matter of time someone safely flies one of these drones into a crowd, charged with explosives.

accidents are a part of life. accidents kill thousands of people annually but we got over it for cars. 

I'm honestly a little surprised that no terrorist has tried what dacloo mentioned.  Granted that low-weight, high-yield explosives are a LITTLE hard to come by, but I don't see this as being much of a barrier.

I hope it never happens, but a certain sub-group of people just want to see the world burn.  They exist in every country.  It's just a matter of time...

muppetry

roake said:

nolamacguy said:

accidents are a part of life. accidents kill thousands of people annually but we got over it for cars. 

I'm honestly a little surprised that no terrorist has tried what dacloo mentioned.  Granted that low-weight, high-yield explosives are a LITTLE hard to come by, but I don't see this as being much of a barrier.

I hope it never happens, but a certain sub-group of people just want to see the world burn.  They exist in every country.  It's just a matter of time...

I haven't seen the detailed specifications on payload, but if this has similar capabilities to its predecessors then it will be unable to carry more than a couple of hundred grams, maximum. That's not much explosive, and there are far more effective ways to deliver much more than that, including any moderately powerful model aircraft.

I'm ordering one as an upgrade to my Phantom 2.

copywriteralan

Regarding talk of terrorists in the comments, as someone pointed out these things cannot carry any real payload. Many of the cheaper ones cannot even carry a real Gopro camera and need special lightweight cameras instead. In contrast you can buy a model plane with a wingspan of 5 ft... As for DJI and their Phantom range, I've just bought one and regret it already. I don't even have it yet, it will be delivered tomorrow, but looking at the various forums it seems owners are very unhappy. They complain of terrible customer service for drones that develop stress cracks around the motors - even the remote controllers break in the user's hand. For example the famous "Return to home button" tends to break off and disappear inside the remote! Rather than issuing a recall the company seems to ignore the issue until they get a complaint and then tell the customer "Send it back to China and we'll take a look". I don't know the exact price but I've read some saying the shipping cost was more than half the price of the drone itself, as because they ignore the problems and won't accept it's a design fault, they charge many for "accident repairs" which have never been crashed. When they work they're amazing, that's why I've paid for one, but shoddy materials, unwillingness to acknowledge design faults, high prices and "Send it back to China" customer service make me wish I'd ignored the fanboys and bought a different brand.

muppetry

CopywriterAlan said:

Regarding talk of terrorists in the comments, as someone pointed out these things cannot carry any real payload. Many of the cheaper ones cannot even carry a real Gopro camera and need special lightweight cameras instead. In contrast you can buy a model plane with a wingspan of 5 ft... As for DJI and their Phantom range, I've just bought one and regret it already. I don't even have it yet, it will be delivered tomorrow, but looking at the various forums it seems owners are very unhappy. They complain of terrible customer service for drones that develop stress cracks around the motors - even the remote controllers break in the user's hand. For example the famous "Return to home button" tends to break off and disappear inside the remote! Rather than issuing a recall the company seems to ignore the issue until they get a complaint and then tell the customer "Send it back to China and we'll take a look". I don't know the exact price but I've read some saying the shipping cost was more than half the price of the drone itself, as because they ignore the problems and won't accept it's a design fault, they charge many for "accident repairs" which have never been crashed. When they work they're amazing, that's why I've paid for one, but shoddy materials, unwillingness to acknowledge design faults, high prices and "Send it back to China" customer service make me wish I'd ignored the fanboys and bought a different brand.

I think that you will find that your fears, regarding the Phantom, are unfounded. I've been using them for several years with zero issues, and they are robust and getting even better. The P3 and P4 are excellent machines. DJI customer service has also improved hugely.

spamsandwich

Interesting. I see a photo of a radio-controlled quadrocopter, but no "drone".