Do DJI hate Android?

[DreamToFly]

DJI Go won't "see" my new tablet. Another household tablet has to be connected in a certain order.

They'e very slow to try and fix these problems, if at all.

So to me it seems like they hate Android devices. I won' go to alleviate again because I hate their walled garden policy.

What' their grudge against Android?

 

[msinger]

Try setting up your tablet like this.

 

[Fly Dawg]

DJI Go won't "see" my new tablet. Another household tablet has to be connected in a certain order.

This is not only an Android issue. Think about your statements for a moment. Go on the assumption that GO, was originally designed to operate primarily with IOS. It would be like comparing Microsoft to Apple. Certain software will only run on the platform it was designed to run on. Interfacing the two, is a time consuming tedious process, and even then there will be certain differences between the two. With Android, being that it is a Linux based OS, is another difference. Linux is closer to Windows than the Mac OS. And as for the last statement there would be no reason for DJI to "Hate" Android. Android systems hold a large market share and it expands the market for the product. So the "Hate" statement would hold little to no value for DJI. As you know many manufacturers use Android and each use certain proprietary features for their phones, tablets and so forth, which in itself causes problems. All that said, with Android, sometimes you will have to do a few extra steps, some straight forward, some not so much, to get things operating properly.

 

[Joe R]

I'm just going off of memory ! But I think I saw their Crystal Sky was android based. I just thought it was odd as I was under the assumption that IOS was their preferred OS

 

[msinger]

I'm just going off of memory ! But I think I saw their Crystal Sky was android based.

That's correct.

 

[tcope]

What' their grudge against Android?

When programming for Apple you need too program for one OS and one device. When programming for Android you need to program for hundreds of OS's and hundreds of devices. No grudge... just much more time and labor intensive.

 

[anotherlab]

What' their grudge against Android?

No grudge, just limited resources to chase after a wide variety of devices. Between the insane number of screen resolutions (my Galaxy S8+ can run in 6 different screen resolutions) and each vendor making tweaks to Android, you need to take extra care when doing the screen layouts for Android. If you make too many assumptions about screen resolutions, your code can become very fragile.

Ultimately this is a management problem, not a technical one. They could resolve this in a few programming sprints by having a private beta program and letting users run a beta version of the app that was loaded to the gills with diagnostic logging code.

 

[sar104]

I'm just going off of memory ! But I think I saw their Crystal Sky was android based. I just thought it was odd as I was under the assumption that IOS was their preferred OS

iOS is easier to write apps for because it's far less diverse in implementation and far more predictable. That's why DJI preferred it. However - you cannot make your own custom iOS tablet because Apple does not license iOS to third parties - that is why they went with Android for CrystalSky.

 

[macoman]

DJI has always be an Apple fanboy... Their mavic and other drones sell on the Apple stores. If you see their products boxes... They have the same style of Apple product boxes... And finally I read somewhere that the DJI CEO is or was a fan of Steve Jobs... So you can see that in one way or the other, they represent Apple.

 

[With The Birds]

This is not only an Android issue. Think about your statements for a moment. Go on the assumption that GO, was originally designed to operate primarily with IOS. It would be like comparing Microsoft to Apple. Certain software will only run on the platform it was designed to run on. Interfacing the two, is a time consuming tedious process, and even then there will be certain differences between the two. With Android, being that it is a Linux based OS, is another difference. Linux is closer to Windows than the Mac OS. And as for the last statement there would be no reason for DJI to "Hate" Android. Android systems hold a large market share and it expands the market for the product. So the "Hate" statement would hold little to no value for DJI. As you know many manufacturers use Android and each use certain proprietary features for their phones, tablets and so forth, which in itself causes problems. All that said, with Android, sometimes you will have to do a few extra steps, some straight forward, some not so much, to get things operating properly.

I’m curious- how can Linux OS be closer to Windows than OSX when both Linux and OSX are based on UNIX. Surely it’s OSX that’s closer to Linux?

 

[Fly Dawg]

I’m curious- how can Linux OS be closer to Windows than OSX when both Linux and OSX are based on UNIX. Surely it’s OSX that’s closer to Linux?

Here's a snip from an article, just for informational purposes. I am by no means a developer but it semi-explains why I said that.


Android uses the Linux kernel under the hood. Because Linux is open-source, Google’s Android developers could modify the Linux kernel to fit their needs. Linux gives the Android developers a pre-built, already maintained operating system kernel to start with so they don’t have to write their own kernel. This is the way many different devices are built — for example, the PlayStation 4 uses the open-source free BSD kernel, while the Xbox One uses the Windows NT kernel found in modern versions of Windows.


You’ll even see the Linux kernel version running on your device under About phone or About tablet in Android’s Settings.

 

[anotherlab]

I’m curious- how can Linux OS be closer to Windows than OSX when both Linux and OSX are based on UNIX. Surely it’s OSX that’s closer to Linux?

Linux is not based on UNIX, but it behaves close enough to it to follow similar coding and usage patterns. Mac OS uses a kernel based on Mach, which in turn was partially based on BSD Unix. The rest of the OS is unique to Apple. The Windows NT kernel is it's own beast, but was influenced (more than 20 years ago) by VMS. The stuff that is similar between the OS kernels is largely based around file operations and some process/task/thread concepts.

For app development, it's a very different story. When you write an iOS app, your code is talking to various iOS framework libraries. You almost never touch anything at the kernel level. With Android, you work with the various Android libraries. These frameworks sit between your code and the operating system. They are optimized for mobile needs and for the hardware on each device

 

[With The Birds]

Linux is not based on UNIX, but it behaves close enough to it to follow similar coding and usage patterns. Mac OS uses a kernel based on Mach, which in turn was partially based on BSD Unix. The rest of the OS is unique to Apple. The Windows NT kernel is it's own beast, but was influenced (more than 20 years ago) by VMS. The stuff that is similar between the OS kernels is largely based around file operations and some process/task/thread concepts.

For app development, it's a very different story. When you write an iOS app, your code is talking to various iOS framework libraries. You almost never touch anything at the kernel level. With Android, you work with the various Android libraries. These frameworks sit between your code and the operating system. They are optimized for mobile needs and for the hardware on each device

Ok so OSX is closer in implementation to Linux than Windows? That was my understanding. It was explained to me years ago by some rather gifted programmers that OSX has significantly more efficient networking and a more secure file structure than windows and they were referring to UNIX. At the time they coded a custom driver that made itunes think it was playing to a sound card when it was actually streaming to custom hardware over wifibroadcast.

 

[anotherlab]

Ok so OSX is closer in implementation to Linux than Windows? That was my understanding. It was explained to me years ago by some
rather gifted programmers that OSX has significantly more efficient networking and a more secure file structure than windows and they were referring to UNIX. At the time they coded a custom driver that made itunes think it was playing to a sound card when it was actually streaming to custom hardware over wifibroadcast.

Linux is not the same as UNIX. Very similar in functionality, but written with all open source code. The parts of macOS that are similar to Linux are based on the Mach microkernel that was being worked on by NeXT. When Apple acquired NeXT, they decided to use their code as the base of the operating system. It's close enough to UNIX that every version of MacOS since 10.5 (excepting Lion) has been certified as being "UNIX" by The Open Group. And and this point nearly 20 years from that starting pointing for macOS.

As for being X more efficient and more secure than Y? Pick your test suite and conditions. Operating system security comes down to usage, policies, behavior, and the users.

For mobile, iOS is much more secure out of the box than Android, but that has a lot to due with the way that apps must pass Apple testing to get into the store and apps have limited access to the rest of the operating system. A sketchy app on Android can actually fry your phone.

 

[With The Birds]

Linux is not the same as UNIX. Very similar in functionality, but written with all open source code. The parts of macOS that are similar to Linux are based on the Mach microkernel that was being worked on by NeXT. When Apple acquired NeXT, they decided to use their code as the base of the operating system. It's close enough to UNIX that every version of MacOS since 10.5 (excepting Lion) has been certified as being "UNIX" by The Open Group. And and this point nearly 20 years from that starting pointing for macOS.

As for being X more efficient and more secure than Y? Pick your test suite and conditions. Operating system security comes down to usage, policies, behavior, and the users.

For mobile, iOS is much more secure out of the box than Android, but that has a lot to due with the way that apps must pass Apple testing to get into the store and apps have limited access to the rest of the operating system. A sketchy app on Android can actually fry your phone.

You have told me everything except whether windows or OSX is closest to Linux (that was my question)- don’t get me wrong, it’s all useful information and I am interested in all of it. I always understood the code wouldn’t be the same between any of these, the Linux kernal was written from scratch to work like UNIX.

As to security- I have never had a virus or any security exploit in OSX, can’t say the same for Windows.

 

[anotherlab]

You have told me everything except whether windows or OSX is closest to Linux (that was my question)- don’t get me wrong, it’s all useful information and I am interested in all of it. I always understood the code wouldn’t be the same between any of these, the Linux kernal was written from scratch to work like UNIX.

As to security- I have never had a virus or any security exploit in OSX, can’t say the same for Windows.

The question of whether Windows or macOS is closest Linux depends on what you are looking at and what you are defining as closeness. Starting with Windows 10 build 16215, you can actually install different versions of Linux as part of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. You can open up your favorite Linux shell running next to Powershell, accessing the same resources. Not in an emulator. Meanwhile macOS follows **ix filesystem conventions and the popular **ix command line tools are all there. But rest of the OS is nothing like Linux.

Regardimg security, it was just a month ago where anyone could login to a Mac running High Sierra with root access. There have been a number of firmware vulnerabilities for Macs as well.

 

[With The Birds]

The question of whether Windows or macOS is closest Linux depends on what you are looking at and what you are defining as closeness. Starting with Windows 10 build 16215, you can actually install different versions of Linux as part of the Windows Subsystem for Linux. You can open up your favorite Linux shell running next to Powershell, accessing the same resources. Not in an emulator. Meanwhile macOS follows **ix filesystem conventions and the popular **ix command line tools are all there. But rest of the OS is nothing like Linux.

Regardimg security, it was just a month ago where anyone could login to a Mac running High Sierra with root access. There have been a number of firmware vulnerabilities for Macs as well.

Fantastic- thank you... it’s the shell similarity (commands) that must have been sticking in my head- that was very helpful.

 

[ETC]

I am not an apple guy but after several attempts with android I got myself a used ipad mini2. It works great with my 3 drones (p3s p4 mavic) and unlike the android I can install djigo and litchi. I found on the androids the best is to just use litchi and don't install djigo at all. I do use my galaxy 5 phone and samsung galaxy 8 tablet but only with litchi and they work great. For all around best luck it's the mini2 but then you have to deal with getting the mini to talk to your windows computer and those issues but that's the apple way.

 

[ecolumbia999]

For myself - I'm using the crystal sky devices because I know that DJI will use the crystal sky devices as one of their testing models. DJI has had growing pains, or quality control, as their program has grown ever more complex in the last couple of years. With the crystal sky DJI can control some of the features, such as os version, memory, device speed - that they cannot with iOS or other android devices. This is not to say there are features I wish about the crystal sky device that I do not like, but it is tuned to running DJI apps more than any other device.

 

[John Tarvin]

DJI Go won't "see" my new tablet. Another household tablet has to be connected in a certain order.

They'e very slow to try and fix these problems, if at all.

So to me it seems like they hate Android devices. I won' go to alleviate again because I hate their walled garden policy.

What' their grudge against Android?

The good news for you may be Litchi. Was originally created as an android app. Seems to work quite well on many Android devices. I'm running it with P4P on an Nvidia Shield K1.

You'll still need a tablet that will talk with the DJI GO 4 app.