What Apps are on your Smart controller? and Why? Here are my (4) so far

[DebianDog]

I will be putting applications on my phone radio very sparingly as I do not want background tasks running if they are not needed. I do not need a market but understand the convenience of using something like the Amazon store. If you want to use the Amazon store I made a REAL short video of how to install it. I personally have been using APKMirror.com for years for a few reasons.

1. You know the exact version you have and you can easily roll back to a previous one if needed
2. No overhead of the Amazon store running
3. You are "kind of" forced to read the change log. Why upgrade if it does nothing to your perfectly working device. Right?
4. You can be sure the version is compatible with your version of the OS you are running. We are on 7.1.2 currently BTW
5. I have never used an antivirus on Android and honestly, as we recently learned, most do not work anyway. I have been in IT/Security for near 30 years and my suggestions are; do not download from unknown sources. Stay off sketchy sites. (You know what I am talking about ). and don't just willy-nilly grant permissions to new apps you just loaded. I have in the past let paranoia set in and scanned my Android devices and have never found anything but I try and stay diligent. If this radio were running a Windows variant I would be singing a different tune. There I swear by EMIsoft as they are much better than Malwarebytes but I digress...

• The "Lightning browser" seems very glitchy to me and I have no idea how it tracks cookies or deals with ads. Plus... I never even heard of it before. On the other hand I know that the Brave Browser is small, not a memory hog, and based on Chrome. The built in ad blocker makes it a rocket. I can log in to Facebook and use things like messenger and switch the browser to the "desktop version" if a site does not work well on mobile. The only downside is since Google play services is not running on the radio it will not sync you bookmarks with your other versions of Brave you run on your other devices.
• Brave Browser Download
• Dropbox - had it for years and makes it easy to push files around without connecting a wire or swapping cards
• Cloud File System - Now using Sync since Dropbox limits you to 3 devices without paying for it
• A better File Exploring program - ES File Explorer is what I am using now
• A voice recorder - The Easy Voice Recorder for talking to myself when flying so I can say thing like "OK I am going to focus stack the next 5 images. The time is X"

So what are you folks running and why?

 

[ff22]

I'd be interested in what WEATHER apps people might be using on the SC. It appears that many, probably due to mapping, want Google Play Services installed which is not possible.

 

[DebianDog]

Photo Pills is my goto photo app but it is a paid app. (so that is a no go)

Clear Outside is a free weather app with focus on photography. You can punch in locations I will give it a test. But honestly I usually have my phone on me

 

[Greg6032]

I'd be interested in what WEATHER apps people might be using on the SC. It appears that many, probably due to mapping, want Google Play Services installed which is not possible.

Hi

I am using PolarPro app
It is give you weather conditions
There also ND filter calculator
I use this app on both CS and SC

 

[DebianDog]

Umm the lightning browser is a free browser written by (1) 25 year old guy. Why would DJI do this? I mean nothing against this guy but it seems super weird to me.

Anthony Restaino

Who are you?

I'm a 25 year old software developer. I have a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from RPI. I live in Brooklyn. I love Android and currently work at IAC on B2B Android apps. See the main page for more info about me.

 

[ff22]

Umm the lightning browser is a free browser written by (1) 25 year old guy. Why would DJI do this? I mean nothing against this guy but it seems super weird to me.

Anthony Restaino

Very interesting. He did not mention his sideline is spying for the Chinese! - Just kidding.

 

[DebianDog]

OK I have added 2 more

A voice recorder so I can talk to myself about what was going on and a better File Explorer. ES file explorer is a bit of overkill but it is nice.

 

[ff22]

I installed Parrot for voice recorder.

I have been using Asus File Manager on my android devices for quite a while. Airmore to wirelessly move files to/from via wifi.

 

[Coskier]

Is the polar pro app pretty handy?

 

[gnirtS]

Some apps i can see as useful but im not seeing any point of putting things like UAV Forecast, weather apps, calculators etc on it.
Anything that needs internet means the SC is going to be tethered from the phone - so the phone is nearby. So just use the app on the phone.
To me the whole purpose of a dedicated device is it lacks a lot of the bloat that slows down performance and affects stability on a general purpose device.

A file explorer is handy along with things like that though.

As for why Lightning browser - its designed for incredible low resource usage and low footprint and lacks a lot of "advanced" features which can be security issues on fuller featured browsers. I can see why DJI went with something like that.

 

[raven swe]

Agree with you there gnirtS, after reading your post I thought to myself yeah why have I got all these apps on my sc when they are duplicated on my phone which I always have with me, so got shot of most of them.

 

[Coskier]

I can see the value in some though, mainly anything related to sharing pics. Assuming I am not loading them to my iPad for editing.

 

[gnirtS]

I'll never edit on a tablet or mobile device for quality reasons but i will sometimes send an image jpg to show a proof of concept.
So ive put Google Photos on which helps there.

 

[Coskier]

I load RAW files from my iPad into Lightroom CC. No quality degradation there. Then they are available to me on my MacBook when I fire up LR Classic and the sync takes over.

 

[gnirtS]

More screen quality, calibration and profiling issues (and the fact mobile device screens are tiny) than software.
I'll sometimes do a basic edit on lightroom mobile but then do a proper one on a proper computer and screen later.