The idea has been hanging in the air for a few years (word games very intended), and now it has finally happened: DJI has killed his long -lasting phantomdrone.
The company recently announced that from June 1, 2025, it will suspend after -sales support and service to its Phantom 4 Pro and Phantom 4 Advanced Drones. This means that there will be no more official technical support or product maintenance for these two models – and it does not come as a big surprise, given that none of them have been in production since 2018. It’s just the way for the consumer electronics world: Things are moving fast, nothing lasts forever, and resources need to be directed at newer products.
Still, when a product line as iconic as the phantom ends, it feels like an important occasion. After all, this is the drone series that really popularized and democratized aerial photography and video, taking them from something that only experts and professionals could implement to hobbies available to anyone with a few hundred pounds to spare.
DJI launched the line in January 2013 with the original Phantom (later known as Phantom 1), a distinctive white quadcopter that used a GPS-based navigation to hover steadily in place. It did not include a built-in camera but could accommodate an optional GoPro hero.
By the end of the year, its successor Phantom 2-Vision had arrived, complete with a gimbalt mounted camera capable of collecting 14MP photos and 1080p video plus the possibility of delivering a live feed directly to the pilot’s smartphone that would be mounted on remote control.
A truly visionary drone
Back in early 2014, the Phantom 2 vision was the first drone I have ever gone through. Or flew ever for that matter. I had already written about cameras and photography for a few years, but the idea of being able to take a camera up in the sky and get a whole new perspective on the world felt incredibly fresh and exciting.
I lived in New York at the time and often took this (rather wicked) white quadcopter soaring over the parks, playgrounds, streets, buildings in my neighborhood in Brooklyn and even over the East River.
The footage looks extremely rough these days, but at that time there was nothing else out there. It felt crazy and more than a little offenders to fly over the city that catches HD video – which Phantom had given me access to a secret world that very few others had bombed on yet. I have never quite had the gut to fly it among skyscrapers and packed streets in Manhattan, although the drone laws at that time were much less strict than they are today.
Few non-technical people even knew about the existence of consumer camera drones in 2014, and I often had to ask questions from fascinated passers-by-what could be difficult to answer sufficiently while trying to keep a drone that had nothing in the way of anti-collision technology in the air.
I crashed several review tests of this and other phantoms in the following years (sorry, DJI PR people!), Not only in New York, but when I eventually returned to the UK-with memorable plowing of a straight into a tree seconds after informing a curious dog-Walker that “these things are pretty impossible to go down”.
The phantoms got a smaller accident image over the years, which incorporated more and more of auto -filing and obstacle examination technology, which we have come to take for granted in today’s DJI drones. They also saw the introduction of better cameras, gimbals to keep these cameras dead level with the horizon and batteries that took place for much longer than Phantom 2’s cunning 15-minute life.
When Phantom 4 Advanced arrived in 2017, the range was able to catch 4K video and fly for almost 30 minutes on a fee. However, it soon became clear that DJI’s priorities switched to its folded drones such as Mavic and later mini and air series. And why not? For all Phantom’s charm and lightweight structure, its inability to fold down to a convenient portable size made it a pain to wear, while Mavic, Air and the Mini series easily fit into a backpack – or even a pocket, in the mini -case.
DJI’s drones dominate every drone category today, from the feature-filled under-250g mini 4 pro, to Triple Camera Mavic 3 Pro, where others offer excellent value as Mini 4K Beginner Drone.
It is probably an appropriate time that the phantom fades away in darkness as the spirit for which it is named. But even if it’s gone, I certainly never want to forget the early days of the range. It was a truly groundbreaking product that essentially built the consumer drone market from nothing. Godspeed, DJI Phantom – and your props should never stop turning.
