Huawei MediaPad M5 10"

[Agis]

Just got a Huawei MediaPad M5 10". I am going back home now to try the latest DJI 4 app on with a Mavic 2 zoom. Stand by for results...

 

[msinger]

It should work just fine. Lots of people are using that tablet.

 

[Agis]

It should work just fine. Lots of people are using that tablet.

Thanks msinger,

I can confirm the tablet works fine with the latest DJI GO 4.3.12 app as well as the latest Aircraft and Controller firmware.

 

[Agis]

DJI GO 4.3.12 on this tablet will not update controller's firmware.

 

[DanMc]

This weekend I took my first real flight with my Hauwei MediaPad M5, 10.8". Several times the DJI Go4 app seemed to crash while flying the Mavic Air. ...or at least the app disappeared, requiring me to restart it using the icon, so I'm assuming that was a crash. I was using the DJI USB-C to USB-A cable to connect to the controller.

I switched back to using my iPhone 6S plus and finished my flying with that. Never had a problem with the iPhone.

Anybody else experience something like this with this tablet?

 

[Agis]

Sounds very scary. Fortunately, I haven't experienced any software issues with this tablet so far, hope I won't.

How did the drone responded to app crash? Have you checked if there were any pending OS or App updates?

 

[DanMc]

Sounds very scary. Fortunately, I haven't experienced any software issues with this tablet so far, hope I won't.

How did the drone responded to app crash? Have you checked if there were any pending OS or App updates?

If the app crashes or disappears, the drone can still be controlled using the sticks and visual control (that is if you can see it). In my case, I just touched the DJI icon and it started right back up. I suppose if it's beyond sight, and you can't get the app back up such as in the case of the phone battery dying, then using the return to home button on the controller would be the next thing to do. All my firmware versions were up to date.

Msinger sent me a list of things to adjust in the Android OS, so I'll do that. It has been very windy the past few days, so I'm not about to put it up into the air in this torrent.

 

[gnirtS]

This weekend I took my first real flight with my Hauwei MediaPad M5, 10.8". Several times the DJI Go4 app seemed to crash while flying the Mavic Air. ...or at least the app disappeared, requiring me to restart it using the icon, so I'm assuming that was a crash. I was using the DJI USB-C to USB-A cable to connect to the controller.

I switched back to using my iPhone 6S plus and finished my flying with that. Never had a problem with the iPhone.

Anybody else experience something like this with this tablet?

Huawei has an aggressive power and resource saving feature where it culls apps more than it should. The solution is to exclude Go4 from the battery optimisation and the auto close power hungry apps list in the settings. Then it wont close.

 

[DanMc]

"Huawei has an aggressive power and resource saving feature where it culls apps more than it should. The solution is to exclude Go4 from the battery optimisation and the auto close power hungry apps list in the settings. Then it wont close. "

Wow, this is excellent input! Last night I went through a list of things I received from msinger. I'll also check the battery optimization. Maybe that change has already been done, but I'll check it specifically. After that, I'll put it up in the air and see how it goes. I think I'll keep it low and close until I have a full trouble-free flight logged. It didn't take more than a couple minutes before the first incident, so one full flight should be good enough.

 

[DanMc]

Today I put the Mavic Air up using the Huawei tablet, after making the changes recommended by everybody. Everything seemed fine, so I picked up some altitude and started capturing a video. Shortly after that, the DJI Go4 app on the tablet started acting very erratic, getting stuck. I stopped it and restarted, and it just wouldn't seem to do anything. I had to use the return to home button on the controller to bring it back so I could land visually. Then I realized what was wrong. I had the tablet set to use the SD card that I had installed as the default storage device. I'm guessing that this SD card is not able to keep up.

I landed, and restarted the app. Then I went in and set it to use the tablet's internal storage. Took off again and flew for about 10 minutes with no issue, recording 4K video for most of that time. No issues at all.

The "external" SD card is a Samsung 256 G unit that I got off ebay for $29. So even though it's labelled as EVO+ with the 3 inside the little U, maybe it's either a fake, or perhaps the external SD controller in the tablet can't handle the high speed caching?

 

[DanMc]

I did some testing to check performance of the storage.
For the Huawei tablet, I downloaded an app from the Play Store called "SD Card Tester", by samliu720. I ran the following tests on the tablet using several cards I had available:

<For the results below, all speeds are in units of MB/Sec.>

Huawei internal storage: Write: 134, Read 170. Wow, that's very nice.

256 GB "Samsung EVO+" ebay special: Write: 12.1, Read 27. Wow, that's horrible!

32 GB SanDisk Extreme: Write: 70, Read: 61.

As a point of comparison, on the laptop, I downloaded a program called SpeedOut from cam-do.com.

256 GB "Samsung EVO+ "ebay special": Write: 9.5, Read 17 Even more horrible than on the tablet

32 GB SanDisk Extreme: Write: 61, Read: 74.

So the lesson learned is that you get what you paid for!! I paid $29 for the Samsung 256 GB EVO+ card on ebay. It arrived in packaging that looked in every way like it was legitimate Samsung packaging and everything. In reality, it must be a fake.