The idea has been suspended in the air for a few years (very expected word game), and now it has finally happened: Dji killed his longtime ghost drone.
The company recently announced that from June 1, 2025, it will suspect after -sales support and maintenance for its advanced drones Phantom 4 Pro and Phantom 4. This means that there will be no technical support or official product maintenance for these two models – and it does not come as a big surprise, since none of them has been in production since 2018. It’s just the way to the world of consumer: Eternally and resources must be directed to more recent products.
However, when a range of products as emblematic as the ghost ends, it looks like an important opportunity. After all, it is the series of drones that has really popularized and democratized the photography and aerial videography, taking them from something that only experts and professionals could undertake in pastime available for anyone with a few hundred books to lose.
Dji launched the line in January 2013 with the original phantom (later known as Phantom 1), a distinctive white quadcopter which used navigation based on GPS to hover regularly. He did not include an integrated camera but could accommodate an optional GoPro hero.
At the end of the year, his successor the Phantom 2 vision arrived, with a camera mounted on Cardan capable of capturing 14MP photos and a 1080p video and the possibility of delivering a live flow directly to the pilot smartphone, which would be mounted on the remote controller.
A truly visionary drone
In early 2014, the Phantom 2 Vision became the first drone that I never reviewed. Or never stolen, by the way. I have already written on cameras and photography for a few years, but the idea of being able to take a camera in the sky and winning a completely new perspective in the world was incredibly fresh and exciting.
I lived in New York at the time and I often took this white quadcopter (rather unsightly) on top of the parks, playgrounds, streets, buildings in my neighborhood in Brooklyn and even on the East river.
The images seem extremely rough these days, but at the time, there was nothing else like that there. It was crazy and more than a little transgressive to fly over the city by capturing the HD video – as the Phantom had given me access to a secret world on which very few others were still cotton. I have never completely had the courage to pilot it among the skyscrapers and the packaged streets of Manhattan, even if the laws on drones were at the time much less strict than they are today.
Few non -technical people even knew the existence of consumer camera drones in 2014, and I often had to answer questions from intrigued passers -by – who could be difficult to answer adequately while simultaneously trying to keep a drone that had nothing in the manner of anti -collision technology in the air.
I crushed several review samples from this phantoms and others in the following years (sorry, Dji Pr people!), Not only in New York, but when I finally returned home to the United Kingdom-by plowing a tree to a tree after a curious-walk that “these things are almost impossible to crash”.
The phantoms have had fewer accident losses over the years, incorporating more and more the technology of implementation and avoidance of the obstacles that we have held for acquired DJI drones. They also saw the introduction of better cameras, cardanal to maintain these dead cameras with the horizon and batteries that lasted much longer than the stingy life of the 15 -minute phantom.
As the Phantom 4 Advanced arrived in 2017, the range was able to capture a 4K video and fly for almost 30 minutes in charge. However, it quickly became clear that DJI’s priorities moved to its folding drones like the Mavic series and later Mini and Air. And why not? For all the charms and light construction of the ghost, its inability to fall back to a convenient portable size has made it pain to transport it, while the Mavic, Air and Mini Series will easily adapt to a backpack – or even a pocket, in the mini case.
DJI drones dominate the practice of each category of drones today, from the under250g mini 4 pro, filled with features, to the triple camera Mavic 3 pro, with others offering superb value such as the mini 4K beginner drone.
This is probably an appropriate period, then, so that the ghost is soothed in darkness as the spirit for which it is named. But even if off we go, I will certainly never forget the first days of the range. It was a truly revolutionary product that essentially built the consumer drone market from nothing. Godspeed, Dji Phantom – and your accessories never stop turning.
