Photo Credit: Digital Riser
On August 15, Google release Android Pie, the latest update to their phone operating system. If you are a DJI pilot who uses your phone to fly(as a remote, or as a screen), you may want to consider delaying your update until DJI fixes the serious bugs in their software.
Third-party apps that work with DJI drones like Litchi, DroneDeploy and others absolutely WILL NOT RUN ON ANDROID PIE. The DJI SDK (software developers kit) which is necessary for interfacing to DJI products, is broken under Android Pie. As a result, all third-party DJI apps either crash unceremoniously or display warning messages and then crash.
This is an especially bad problem because, with the video problems that have been occurring in the DJI Go 4 app, many people have been running Litchi. Now, if they upgrade their phone, they can’t do that. Also, people who use their drones to make money by flying, mapping, survey, crop health, time-lapse and other missions rely on third-party apps to control their missions. They are all grounded until DJI corrects the problem.
DJI claims to be working on this problem, but it is also clear from reading the messages in their forums that the people reassuring us have no idea what they are talking about and don’t know the difference between an app and an SDK.
Until then, you may consider waiting to update your phone.