The idea has been hanging in the air for some years (word game), and now it finally happened: DJI has killed its long -time ghost -manned plane.
The company recently announced that, as of June 1, 2025, it will suspend the support and after -sales service of its advanced drones Phantom 4 Pro and Phantom 4 Advancez. This means that there will be no more official technical support or maintenance of products for these two models, and that is not a great surprise, since neither of them has been in production since 2018. It is only the world of consumer electronics world: things move quickly, nothing lasts forever and resources must be aimed at newer products.
Even so, when a line of products as iconic as the ghost comes to an end, it feels like a transcendental occasion. After all, this is the series of drones that really popularized and democratized photography and aerial videography, taking them from something that only experts and professionals could undertake in hobbies available for anyone with a few hundred pounds of plenty.
DJI launched the line in January 2013 with the original Phantom (later known as the Phantom 1), a distinctive white quadcopter that used a GPS -based navigation to float in its place. It did not include a built -in camera, but it could accommodate an optional Gopro hero.
At the end of the year, his successor The Phantom 2 Vision had arrived, completed with a cardan -mounted camera capable of capturing 14MP photos and a 1080p video plus the ability to deliver a live diet directly to the pilot’s 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 have reviewed. Or once flew, for the case. I had already been writing about cameras and photographs for some years, but the idea of being able to take a camera to heaven and win a completely new perspective in the world felt incredibly fresh and exciting.
I lived in New York at that time I often took this white quadcopter (quite heartbreaking) that rose over the parks, playgrounds, streets, buildings in my neighborhood in Brooklyn and even about East River.
The footage looks extremely hard these days, but at that time there was nothing more like this. He felt crazy and more than a little transgressive flying over the city that captured HD videos, like the Phantom had given me access to a secret world in which very few had yet altered. I never had the guts to fly between the skyscrapers and the packed streets of Manhattan, even if the laws of drones at that time were much less strict than they are today.
Few non -technological people even knew about the existence of drones of consumer cameras in 2014, I often had to transmit questions of intrigued passersby, which could be difficult to answer properly while trying to maintain a drone that had nothing in the form of technology against collision in the air.
I watched several shows of review of this and other ghosts in the following years (sorry, DJI public relations people!), Not only in New York, but when I finally returned home to the United Kingdom, memorably launching one directly in a tree seconds after informing a curious dog’s walk that “these things are quite impossible to crash.”
The Phantoms had fewer accidents over the years, incorporating more and more self -pepilotization technology and avoidance of obstacles that we have taken for granted in the current DJI drones. They also saw the introduction of better cameras, gimbals to keep those cameras level with the horizon and batteries that continued for much longer than the studded life of 15 minutes of the Phantom 2.
When Phantom 4 advanced arrived in 2017, the range was able to capture 4K videos and fly for almost 30 minutes with a load. However, it was soon clear that DJI’s priorities were changing to their folding drones such as the Mavic series and later mini and air. And why not? For all the charms of Phantom and light construction, its inability to bend to a conveniently portable size made it a pain to carry, while the Mavic series, Air and Mini will easily fit in a backpack, or even a pocket, in the case of the Mini.
DJI drones dominate the practice of each category of drones today, from the SUB-250g Mini 4 Pro full of characteristics to the Triple Mavic 3 Pro camera, with others that offer an excellent value such as the Mini 4K Boger Drone.
It is probably an adequate moment, then, that the ghost fades in the dark as the spirit that is named. But even if it has gone, I will never forget those first days of the range. It was a truly innovative product that essentially built the consumer drones market from nothing. Godspeed, Dji Phantom, and that your accessories never stop turning.
