It’s a little hard to believe, but DJI — the company that launched five new products last year (Osmo Mobile 2, Mavic Air, Ronin S, Mavic 2 & Osmo Pocket) — has yet to make a major product launch announcement this year. They released the Mavic 2 Smart Controller back in January and an updated Matrice 200 in February, but otherwise we haven’t seen any releases; let alone the launch of new consumer product.
Now, following hot on the heels of the unconfirmed news that DJI would not be making a Phantom 5, they have announced a release event scheduled for May 15.
Updates?
Unlike smartphone companies like Apple or Samsung, DJI doesn’t follow a regular update schedule. The Mavic Pro saw the Mavic Pro Platinum released barely 6 months after it hit store shelves while the Inspire line had to wait two full year between the Inspire 1 & Inspire 2.
That said, some of DJI’s current products are more ripe than other for an update. The Phantom 4 Pro, Inspire 2 and Spark are all over 2 years old. However, we haven’t seen any leaks surrounding any of these in the past month making it highly unlikely we’ll see an update released anytime soon.
That means that we will most likely be seeing a brand new product from DJI on May 15.
Decoding “Unleash Your Other Side”
Like Apple and other tech companies, DJI always includes cryptic hints in the title and graphics for its release events. This event is no likely no different.
The image — a woman free-diving flipped upside-down — doesn’t give us any glimpses of the mystery product. However, it does to imply that DJI’s product will be water related in some way. This could materialize in two ways: an underwater drone an or an action camera.
The DJI Action Camera
In the week preceding DJI announcing this event one rumor dominated the forums and blogs: that DJI would be releasing an action camera to compete directly against GoPro. The unnamed action camera will be based on the Osmo Pocket’s sensor but use a wider angle lens.
Now, new leaks have all but confirmed this with famed DJI insider @OsitaLV tweeting out actual images of the action cam.
From the images we can see that this camera will take many of its design cues from the GoPro 7 though there are some key differences. Most notably: it features a large screen on the front. One can guess that this will be used primarily for people taking selfie shots, much like the small 1″ screen on the Osmo Pocket. We’ll have to see whether it will also be a touchscreen.
Still yet to be leaked out about the DJI action camera is its price. Given DJI’s previous track record of aggressive pricing, it’s fairly safe to guess that it’ll be the same or less than the GoPro 7 Black. Whether DJI will extend its Osmo name to this camera is also yet to be seen, but Osmo Action has a nice ring to it.
