As with any dji product, differing android devices and their particular version of the OS makes these things a crap shoot at the very best. I'll have one phone running lollipop connect and work perfect for weeks, while a slightly different one with the same versions will give me 7 kinds of hell. From what I'm seeing since getting my Spark around Oct 1st and Phantom3S the week before, dji's apps are essentially crap. Its truly sad considering the levels of the hardware they produce.
Honestly, the general rule seems to be they piss off *thousands* of customers with EVERY update published. They either kill the video feed, generate connection issues like you're having, or cause control weird outs, etc. At the same time, other people come out unscathed, or so I hear. DJI flat refuses to even acknowledge customer issues in their own forums, let alone the Play Store. Complaints fall on deaf, moronic ears... yet they continue to concern themselves with bloating the app even more by adding [crappy] music files, more editor capabilities, etc... instead of addressing the more serious issues at hand. Perhaps after a serious injury, or even death from one of their products suddenly falling out of the sky, they'll consider a policy change. Let's hope it doesn't come to either circumstance. They need to keep it simple, and split the editor and other worthless crap off into separate packages so they don't break everything at once.
For the record, I just spent several days getting my Spark air worthy again after forgetting to disconnect from my home wifi before launching the app and connecting the Spark. Typically, I hit airplane mode, then connect by OTG to avoid update pings and connection problems. Weird as it sounds, it seems this last FW NOTICE hit my app before I could switch to the Spark's wifi, which made it totally disappear from my list. Poof, gone just like that ! (And thats with only 2 AP's in my list to start with).
Again, this wasn't like I took the actual update. I can only speculate the notice alone was enough to mess things up in an instant. I'm not really sure what brought the wifi back either... aside from several [system wide] reboots, manually adding, removing and adding the ssid and password several times, then finally threatening to use it for skeet practice if it didn't knock it's crap off and get with the program. Glad I learned early on to keep a collection of installers in APK form, as downloading them repeatedly eats data quick at 100-160mb for every attempt (GO vs GO4).
Wanting a larger screens, I decided to pick up a couple of nice used tablets running different versions of android than I'd used before. About 5 highly frustrating hours later, I finally got past the login screen with the one I'm dedicating to the Spark, which kept glitching in and out on me every 10 seconds or so, right when I'd go to hit login button. Same with trying to enter my email and password. That page would show up for maybe half a second, then glitch to solid white. 10 secs later, it'd appear just long enough for me to poise a finger at the right spot, ready to click the next time around. I eventually figured out to keep the tablet in portrait mode, which stopped it from flashing out on me.
Keep in mind, these new devices are on the golden list that *should* work, while not being officially supported, other pilots have had luck with them supposedly. For the Spark, its now a Samsung Tab4 [8"] on lollipop 5.1.1 and v4.1.15 of GO4. The other one is the 10" version, with GO v4.1.15 and lollipop v5.0.2. FWIW, the 10" loaded GO on the very first try, connected the wifi, and has given me zero static so far. Who knows.
Previously, the Spark worked flawlessly with a Galaxy Core Prime, running kitkat 4.4.4, and GO v4.1.10. My P3S still works with a Galaxy Amp Prime on android marshmallow, v6.0.1. I just wanted a bigger display especially in this case, and wow, that 10" screen IS nice.
I would like to add that neither drone cares for interference in the least. In my highly rural farm environment with only one access point active, I have to make sure I'm not too close to the house when trying to setup for flight. Same thing goes for vehicles, any large metal objects, electric fences, power lines, etc. Otherwise, I experience compass errors, loss of fpv and control signals, and generally flaky behavior even when flying within 100' or less of the controller. Even using upgraded antennas and parabolic reflectors, the range can be surprisingly low in the wrong areas. As long as I get a clean startup with no red in the status page, I see every bit of the published range for both drones.
Bottom line, Android isn't on DJI's front burner by any means. While Apple devices aren't necessarily all that much better, I keep reading they're a little less glitchy for the most part. Its obvious DJI caters to their Apple users first, and the rest of us get the sloppy seconds. I just wish I had a clue about their overall practices before I made the first investment, let alone a second one. As the old saying goes, fool me once...
In any event, welcome to our world! Hang on to that reciept, and if possible, get insured against loss/fly-aways!
