DJI GO4 app Won't run on Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra

Cymru · Sep 27, 2022

DJI have essentially given up on Go4. No newer drones use it and i can see them investing little or no time into keeping it working at all before long.

zocalo · Sep 28, 2022

Cymru said:
DJI have essentially given up on Go4. No newer drones use it and i can see them investing little or no time into keeping it working at all before long.

True, and I understand why they would do that, but the Mavic 2 Pro and Zoom came out in late 2018. That means they have essentially abandoned support on a ~$1,000 product after a shelflife of around three years. That's pretty poor, and even phone vendors - which have an equally bad reputation on this for products that can have a similar value - tend to do better than that. I still use a Samsung S7 Plus as my controller for my M2P, and I'm still getting app updates for it from both Samsung and Google.

Ultimately, this might be saving DJI money in support costs, but it's clearly also having a negative impact on how people feel about the company making them more likely to avoid DJI in the future, and may well be advising others to do the same. There's absolutely a time when support has to end on a product, but an abrupt halt without any notice after just three years on a $1,000 product still feels a little on the low side, does it not?

Cymru · Sep 28, 2022

Wasn't defending them (I have a M2P so the same issue....and a Smart Controller v1 which was obsolete even faster) but it does look like its basically abandoned.

alibaba6 · Oct 4, 2022

Sorry to chime in as a newbie but I’m dealing with same issue w/my s21 ultra. Any suggestions on a different drone?

mobilehomer · Oct 4, 2022

alibaba6 said:
Sorry to chime in as a newbie but I’m dealing with same issue w/my s21 ultra. Any suggestions on a different drone?

I just installed Go 4 on my S21 Ultra and it runs fine. Try this. Uninstall it and download and install it from DJI website.

mpollis · Oct 9, 2022

Go 4 still not working on my Note 20. Will the app work on an older Android phone? I have a few older Samsung phones laying around.
Thanks

zocalo · Oct 9, 2022

mpollis said:
Go 4 still not working on my Note 20. Will the app work on an older Android phone? I have a few older Samsung phones laying around.
Thanks

Yes, it will. This is the approach I've used - using an S7 Edge in my case - as a dedicated M2P controller, which at least allows me to leave it connected to the RC unless on charge, which wasn't the case when I was using it as a phone as well, so there are at least some advantages to this approach.

The Go4 issue seems to be a combination of the CPU and Android version (both 11 and 12 have had issues), but I'd still try and stay as recent as you can so you as much CPU and memory as possible on the phone to actually run the app. Besides not having a SIM and running in flight mode most of the time, I've also stripped off a lot of the other apps I had installed on my S7 and essentially just have photo/tablet related ones on it so, despite its age, it's still quite responsive and very stable in use, and has decent battery life too, which is always nice to have.