May have found Wunderphone 2

[Just_nick]

Bought a Huawei Sensa from the $20 SlickDeals deal, making it less than half the price of the Ascend XT2. Has a 1080p screen, but only a 3000mAh battery, so we will see how it does when running DJI GO. It's raining here, so I haven't had a chance to fly it, but the preliminary tests of moving the drone around in rapid movements showed no lag or frame dropping, so I'm crossing my fingers. Even if it doesn't perfectly, it was a whooping $21 with overnight shipping. Hard to beat.

 

[wytnyt]

good price but the battery may be an issue but working with the app is a huge plus.

 

[MavicCF]

Bought a Huawei Sensa from the $20 SlickDeals deal, half the price of the Ascend XT2. Has a 1080p screen, but only a 3000mAh battery. It's raining here, so I haven't had a chance to fly it, but the preliminary tests of moving the drone around in rapid movements showed no lag or frame dropping, so I'm crossing my fingers. Even if it doesn't perfectly, it was a whooping $21 with from overnight shipping. Hard to beat.

I'll be watching this thread eagerly for updates!

 

[Just_nick]

good price but the battery may be an issue but working with the app is a huge plus.

I'm curious how the battery does, I'll do some trials with it. However, the latest version of the GO app downloaded and connected with absolutely zero issues, and I have all the telemetry data, too. That was the thing that concerned me most, with performance second and battery life last. This will be my go-to device for going out in the middle of nowhere and not caring what happens to it, so I'm hoping it proves to be reliable.

The biggest issue I have seen is that there is zero rooting support for it, meaning I have no ability to go in and delete the useless preloaded apps.

 

[LarryM]

Interesting and potentially cheap solution. Keep us updated. Your RC will charge the phone. I've thought about using the first MP (~15% power remaining) battery with an adapter to feed into the second RC USB port to keep both phone and RC powered, although I still have more than enough battery life with my current setup to get me through three flight batteries.

 

[Cymruflyer]

So the screen on this one is just as bright as the XT2 Wunderphone?

 

[genesimmons]

the motovations is simple,,,,,,,, if it works and its cheap thats awsome, not every one wants a iphone x to run thier drone nor should u need a iphone x to run it, if some one finds a cheap phone that does the job thats awsome and i welcome him/her testing it out and sharing thier findings, i personally have used 3 phones and i have found dji go runs pretty crappy on most of them, litchi on the other hand runs smooth on my cheap blu phone no issues, i dont think most of issues people have is phone but maybe overloaded app

 

[Cymruflyer]

That $20 deal has now ended.

 

[mel.m]

Hope it goes well 4u just dissapointed I missed out if all goes well

 

[Just_nick]

Nevermind, apparently the bar just didn't work.

 

[Just_nick]

Well, I just flew it today on an extremely bright day, and the phone did just fine in the bright sunlight. A sunshade would make things nice, but I had zero issues seeing was on the screen. Flew out about 1 mile and back, no issues at all. I was also running zebras and while there was tiny bit of stuttering on occasion as I did panning, it did not have any issues. I burned through about 8% battery life on the phone while shooting 4K 30FPS on the phone, going from 88%-80%, with 10 minutes of flight time and 10,500 feet of distance covered. So, I'll extrapolate that I'll go through about 20ish% battery capacity by flying a full Mavic Pro battery.

 

[black_magic100]

good price but the battery may be an issue but working with the app is a huge plus.

Why would the battery be an issue? 3000 mah is not small at all

 

[Just_nick]

Why would the battery be an issue? 3000 mah is not small at all

Probably because it's only 3/4 the size of the Wunderphone 1, and the Wunderphone 1 has a lower resolution that requires less power. That being said, I will probably get just under 2 hours of total flight time on a single charge at max brightness and with overexposure warnings, which is more than sufficient for me.
That being said, this phone seems to be very good for the price. You could literally buy two of these from Walmart for the price of the Wunderphone 1, which means you get 4 hours of flight time. It also means that if you have a portable charging device like a generator, you could even have the second phone charging at the same time and you'd have no issues with battery life at all (due to being able to rotate devices).

 

[Just_nick]

Flew it again tonight for ten minutes, then it got too dark. I am still amazed at how well this thing performs for $20. It was doing some 360 degree rotations and I had zero hiccups or stuttering as I panned in 4K 30FPS. Once again burned about 8 percent for 10 minutes of flight with the screen still at full brightness.

 

[Turn11]

only a 3000mAh battery

This should alleviate the problem

 

[Just_nick]

Finally flew a full battery on it. It was on a bright day with overexposure warnings on and a lot of panning, but all I ended up running into was some mild stutter. I forgot to check the battery level drop, but the phone never gave me an issue, even when I exited to verify I was in airplane mode.

 

[WillyWonka]

Bought a Huawei Sensa from the $20 SlickDeals deal, making it less than half the price of the Ascend XT2. Has a 1080p screen, but only a 3000mAh battery, so we will see how it does when running DJI GO. It's raining here, so I haven't had a chance to fly it, but the preliminary tests of moving the drone around in rapid movements showed no lag or frame dropping, so I'm crossing my fingers. Even if it doesn't perfectly, it was a whooping $21 with overnight shipping. Hard to beat.

Battery will not be a problem...it will charge itself from the controller

 

[Just_nick]

Update. A couple issues I noticed the past two days:
1. There is some definite lag between the video feed and what I'm actually doing. It isn't at all an issue if you are flying about normally, but trying to do any precision flying with the drone from a dead stop is not going to happen. It is very jerky and you will press forward on the stick, it seems like nothing happened, then it catches up .25 seconds later.
2. The DJI app was having trouble when I tried opening it up. It got stuck loading forever when I was trying to capture a sunset, and I ended up wasting over a minute after I booted up and clicked on it. It went into the app, then just stayed stuck on blank before it finally did something.

 

[droneuser]

Update. A couple issues I noticed the past two days:
1. There is some definite lag between the video feed and what I'm actually doing. It isn't at all an issue if you are flying about normally, but trying to do any precision flying with the drone from a dead stop is not going to happen. It is very jerky and you will press forward on the stick, it seems like nothing happened, then it catches up .25 seconds later.
2. The DJI app was having trouble when I tried opening it up. It got stuck loading forever when I was trying to capture a sunset, and I ended up wasting over a minute after I booted up and clicked on it. It went into the app, then just stayed stuck on blank before it finally did something.

what apps do you have running in the background? that could be your problem. also are you screen recording at the same time?

 

[Just_nick]

what apps do you have running in the background? that could be your problem. also are you screen recording at the same time?

No apps, no screen recording. There is no noticeable lag while in motion, but the response time is clearly off.