Cell Service on phone/tablet

[Pointyhead]

My Phantom (P3A) arrives today! Now that that is out of the way, I have a question about phones and/or tablets. I'm a bit confused. I plan on using my iPhone 6s plus. My understanding is that the phone is just the user interface to the controller, and gets the signal via a USB cable to the phone. I also understand that most put the phone on airplane mode ( they should make an upgrade and call it a quad copter mode!) while flying.

Then I read a lot of posts and see that many recommend a tablet that has cell service on it such as an iPad. Is it necessary to have cellular on the device? Some also state the need for having GPS on the device. Is this for displaying the map?

It seems to me that any tablet that can run the Go app (or whatever app you choose) should suffice instead of having the need for GPS and cellular service on it. But, I'm a noob so I turn to you good people for an answer.

PH

 

[Oso]

My Phantom (P3A) arrives today! Now that that is out of the way, I have a question about phones and/or tablets. I'm a bit confused. I plan on using my iPhone 6s plus. My understanding is that the phone is just the user interface to the controller, and gets the signal via a USB cable to the phone. I also understand that most put the phone on airplane mode ( they should make an upgrade and call it a quad copter mode!) while flying.

Then I read a lot of posts and see that many recommend a tablet that has cell service on it such as an iPad. Is it necessary to have cellular on the device? Some also state the need for having GPS on the device. Is this for displaying the map?

It seems to me that any tablet that can run the Go app (or whatever app you choose) should suffice instead of having the need for GPS and cellular service on it. But, I'm a noob so I turn to you good people for an answer.

PH

Check out this single post to help a bit with your research. Your phone will work fine, but since you also asked about tablets this should help give you a high level understanding. Cheers!
Tablets and phones that work well with DJI GO

 

[Air Ontario]

The gps equiped device will use the device's cellular antenna to access sats. So cell service isn't needed, just a device with gps and access to its cellular antenna, thus the misnomer "cellular service."

Gps will use the internal cellular antenna but not the cell service.

 

[rockydog]

Your iPhone 6s plus will work just fine. The reason that you need an iPad with cellular, is that the non cellular versions don't have gps in them.
You only need the gps for "follow me" and re-setting the home point to your RC location, and you've got it in your phone.

 

[Pointyhead]

So, the phantom does not get its gps information internally, but uses the phone's gps program to know where it's at?


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

 

[Pointyhead]

Check out this single post to help a bit with your research. Your phone will work fine, but since you also asked about tablets this should help give you a high level understanding. Cheers!
Tablets and phones that work well with DJI GO

Thanks, that told me a lot! And honest, I did a search before I questioned, but that one didn't show up! It should be made a stickie!

 

[rockydog]

So, the phantom does not get its gps information internally, but uses the phone's gps program to know where it's at?


Sent from my iPhone using PhantomPilots mobile app

No...the quad's own gps tells it where it is....the gps in the phone/tablet tells the quad where the controller is.

 

[Pointyhead]

No...the quad's own gps tells it where it is....the gps in the phone/tablet tells the quad where the controller is.

Gotcha!

 

[dixter]

To answer your question a little differently....(for iOS) iphone 6+ works "ok" if you plan on not using 3rd party apps and decide to stay with the DJI GO app... but if you decide that you want to expand the capabilities of your quad then for iOS you will want to get either an ipad or a ipad mini...
been there done that... I started out with my iphone 6+ and soon decided that I wanted to expand the quads capabilities so I searched down the 3rd party apps that I wanted to test and use.... what you will find is most apps will work with the iphone 6+ but some apps get limited options due to the screen size not large enough for all of the options available with an ipad... an example is Autopilot where using an ipad or ipad mini it gives you the option of " inline controls " while flying so you can interact with the quad while on a fly mission... you can not do that with an iphone 6+... also with the ipad mini you will see that the mission screen shows both the camera view and the map view on the same screen... with an iphone 6+ you will need to configure the quad remote controller for flipping between the two screen options while flying...
A ipad or iphone6+ with GPS capability allows the DJI GO app to be able to know where the remote controller is located by using the GPS of those devices... the Quad has its own GPS circuit so between the RC and the Quad the app knows who is who and where each is.... your iphone6+ also has a built in
barometer in it.... the Autopilot uses this for more precision flying too.... not all ipads have a barometer if you decide to go that route, the new ones do...
and at least one good 3rd party app does not support iphones at all.... you have to use an ipad for it to work....

 

[Oso]

Thanks, that told me a lot! And honest, I did a search before I questioned, but that one didn't show up! It should be made a stickie!

Awesome. I'm glad you found it helpful. Cheers.