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DJI GO 4 killing phone battery even when not in use?
2834 34 2017-7-14
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Twirlip
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Problem:  DJI GO 4 is massacring my phone's battery even when I'm not  using or running the app at all.  Anyone have any idea what's going on?

Here's what happened:

- Just got my Mavic yesterday.  Installed DJI GO 4 on my Android phone, had several successful flights, all went well.
-  After my last flight of the evening, I used the Android "show all apps"  button (the "square" one at bottom right) to kill DJI GO 4 so it  wouldn't be running even in the background.  (I generally do that  routinely for everything; I prefer to leave as few things running in the  background as possible.)
- Charged my phone overnight as usual.
- This morning, unplugged my phone.  Haven't looked at or touched DJI GO 4 all day.
-  Just now (early afternoon) happened to look at my phone, and saw to my  astonishment that it's nearly out of battery.  That never happens this  early in the day.
- Went into the "battery" control panel and saw  that DJI GO 4 used up a whopping 26% of my entire battery charge today,  even though I haven't run the app at all.  (Indeed, haven't even used my  phone at all, other than sending a half-dozen text messages.)

What  the heck?  Anyone have any idea what's going on here?  This is  unsustainable-- at this rate my phone won't even last until I get home.   I don't see what I can do, other than uninstall DJI GO 4 every time I  finish flying, and re-installing just before flying again, which seems  ridiculous.

Has anyone else run into something like this?

2017-7-14
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dronist
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Twir, what type of phone, os, go4 version etc?
2017-7-14
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SMOKENLAZER
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If your on iPhone try turning "Reduce Motion" ON.
2017-7-14
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SMOKENLAZER
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Go to Settings>General>Accessibility>Reduce Motion>ON
2017-7-14
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Gmman
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It is also happening on my Samsung galaxy S5. I uninstalled it and my battery useage is back to normal.....
2017-7-14
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Lucas775
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SMOKENLAZER Posted at 2017-7-14 15:06
If your on iPhone try turning "Reduce Motion" ON.

What does this do to iphones?
2017-7-14
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PHL
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Another thing which can occur is if the GPS is always on. In iOS, you can disable GPS when not using the app. Not sure what the setting is in Android, as I haven't installed DJI Go on my travel phone.
2017-7-14
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Xman1
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I force close it every time I am done with it.

What it is doing is logging everything you do and sending it to many sites.  40+ sites last I looked.  It really needs to be firewalled as it is out of control in my opinion.

With that said, just force close it and it won't be doing anything anymore.

I should metion Settings -> Apps -> DJI GO 4.  Click the force close button here and your battery will return to normal.
2017-7-14
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Twirlip
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Thanks everyone, the force-close option did the trick.  Holy smokes, that's an obnoxious app.  The same screen that allows me to force-close it also shows packets sent/received, and it was huge.   Ick.

Anyway, now I know.  Will become moot fairly soon, I'm getting a CrystalSky shortly and hopefully won't be needing to run the app on my phone thereafter.

As for the version question earlier:  I'm running Android on a Moto X, DJI Go 4.1.3.  Ha, just now noticed among the reviews on the Google Play store for the app:  one of the top comments, "Massive battery drain in background."  Well, there ya go.  Now I know.  :-)

Anyway, thank you very much for all the help.
2017-7-14
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PHL
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I suspect you might be on Android; Android allows apps to keep running in the background by default, whereas iOS doesn't. I've made it a habit with my Android travel phone to kill all background apps when exiting.
2017-7-14
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MARSAN
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Twirlip Posted at 2017-7-14 20:23
Thanks everyone, the force-close option did the trick.  Holy smokes, that's an obnoxious app.  The same screen that allows me to force-close it also shows packets sent/received, and it was huge.   Ick.

Anyway, now I know.  Will become moot fairly soon, I'm getting a CrystalSky shortly and hopefully won't be needing to run the app on my phone thereafter.

Unfortunately you're not saying, which version of Android you're using.
In my version of Android 7.0 for Battery in the Advanced settings, there's an App power monitor option, which I set to On.
Android 7.0 will then automatically put to sleep all the apps that are misbehaving.
2017-7-15
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Maxxpsoft
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PHL Posted at 2017-7-14 22:00
I suspect you might be on Android; Android allows apps to keep running in the background by default, whereas iOS doesn't. I've made it a habit with my Android travel phone to kill all background apps when exiting.

When I read this decided to check myself cause it seemed like my battery was going down fast on a Ipad mini 4. Only use this iPad to fly my drones and have been just leaving it on.

Should have took a picture but in Battery

Last 2 days
DJI Go was at 69% (I had not used my Pantom 3 std in a week or better.)
DJI Go 4 was at 27% (fly nearly everyday so about right)

Why this battery drain?
I uninstalled DJI Go for P3
2017-7-15
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Twirlip
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MARSAN Posted at 2017-7-15 02:38
Unfortunately you're not saying, which version of Android you're using.
In my version of Android 7.0 for Battery in the Advanced settings, there's an App power monitor option, which I set to On.
Android 7.0 will then automatically put to sleep all the apps that are misbehaving.

Sorry for the omission-- it's Android 5.1.

The app works great when I'm actually flying the drone, it's just a hideous battery hog 24/7 whenever I'm *not* flying and the app's in the background.

Per the advice in this thread, force-killing the app (via Settings -> Apps) does the trick.  I just make it a habit to force-kill the app as soon as I land my drone and shut down.

(And hopefully will become a moot point soon, when I manage to get my newly-arrived CrystalSky to work...)
2017-7-15
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MARSAN
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Twirlip Posted at 2017-7-15 16:37
Sorry for the omission-- it's Android 5.1.

The app works great when I'm actually flying the drone, it's just a hideous battery hog 24/7 whenever I'm *not* flying and the app's in the background.

I don't think that Android 5.1 was able to automatically put to sleep misbehaving apps.
Therefore Force Stopping the app manually appears to be the only solution, unless there is a possibility in the Developer options.

But your CrystalSky will also work with the DJI GO 4 app, won't you be back to square one then?

2017-7-16
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Angelo26
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This happened from the very first beginnings back in Dec. 2016 and got worse with every update ....................... DJI was asked to stop this BS since then, (as always) promised to improve (after hundreds of promises to relay info to DJI-"engineers", "reporting"  the issue by "admins" here) and ...................... never changed the issue, because they don´t give a sh.. about customer complaints. Don´t hope they will change this issue, DJI GO4 still will be worse after each update ..............
2017-7-16
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PHL
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Maxxpsoft Posted at 2017-7-15 16:09
When I read this decided to check myself cause it seemed like my battery was going down fast on a Ipad mini 4. Only use this iPad to fly my drones and have been just leaving it on.

Should have took a picture but in Battery

Unfortunately later versions of iOS allowed background app refresh unless you disable it; useful at time with apps that know how to use it properly, but probably Go doesn't.
2017-7-16
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Twirlip
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MARSAN Posted at 2017-7-16 00:21
I don't think that Android 5.1 was able to automatically put to sleep misbehaving apps.
Therefore Force Stopping the app manually appears to be the only solution, unless there is a possibility in the Developer options.

Regarding "back to square one with CrystalSky"-- No, not so much, I think it's  much less of a concern there, for several reasons.

First, I don't live on the CrystalSky, the way I live on my phone.  I use it only for flying the drone.  Whereas my phone is how I stay in contact with the world and vice versa, and I carry it everywhere with the expectation that its charge will last all day.  Phone running out of juice in the middle of the day when I'm far from home = serious inconvenience.

Second, unlike my phone which needs to be on all the time, I turn the CrystalSky off when I'm not using it to fly the drone.  Basically, it doesn't matter if DJI GO 4 uses a lot of power in the background, because on the CrystalSky it isn't in the background-- it's the only reason I have the device in the first place.

Third, the CrystalSky has a ridiculously larger battery (one of the reasons for getting it in the first place)-- it hardly even notices the drain.  I think the battery alone weighs at least three times what my phone does.

Finally:  I'm reasonably sanguine about the future of software QA for running DJI GO 4 on the CrystalSky.  Why?  Because it's a flagship DJI product.  This gets at how software production works (something I'm fairly familiar with, being a software engineer myself).  No software is perfect; there's always *some* bug.  How well software runs is a combination of how much money/effort a company's willing to invest in QA, and how hard a problem they're trying to solve.  My impression of DJI thus far is that they're stunningly good at *hardware* engineering (the Mavic just makes my jaw drop), but when it comes to *software*... not so much.  And I'm not super surprised at that.  For one thing, trying to ship software that runs on a whole lot of platforms (e.g. iOS, plus umpteen flavors of Android) is a *huge* test matrix to work through.  It's pretty clear that DJI is fairly Apple-centric, and their Android support is kind of an afterthought.  It doesn't surprise me that their Apple software gets the lion's share of the QA love.  (And I suspect that they write their software first for Apple and then try to port it to Android, which would stack the deck against Android, too.)  I don't know that, of course, but it's consistent with what I observe (i.e. iOS software generally much more stable than Android) and it stands to reason.

But in the case of the CrystalSky:  that's an actual, flagship DJI product.  If DJI GO 4 won't run on the CrystalSky, then the CrystalSky itself is useless, and that gives their own hardware product a black eye, which means that presumably they'll be motivated to try to keep it working well.  Furthermore, from a software engineering/QA standpoint, it's a much easier target than dealing with all the umpteen flavors of Android out there, because it's their platform:  they control the hardware, they control which OS it's running, they control which version of DJI GO 4 is on it.  Which means that when they need to test it, they don't have to test N zillion different potential combinations.  It's a much, much simpler problem that way, which means if they only have N engineer hours to spend on it, they can focus those hours much more effectively.

What it boils down to is that I think CrystalSky will run the app better because, from DJI's point of view, 1. it's a much easier technical problem to solve, and 2. they can't afford for it not to run well.

And, in fact, a lot of that is why I got a CrystalSky in the first place.  Not just because it has that nice bright display... but I was reading the forums for months before I got the Mavic, and I got the impression that their Android software is crap when running on phones, and my phone's an Android, and I didn't want to buy an awesome drone and have the experience ruined by subpar phone software.  I made the bet that it would run better on CrystalSky than on Random Android Phone X, at least in the long term.  Basically, I waited for CrystalSky availability before getting my Mavic.

Also, in retrospect, there's one more reason to prefer using a CrystalSky over my phone, which I didn't anticipate but in hindsight probably should have:  privacy / security.  The DJI GO 4 app on Android requires horrifyingly broad permissions.  It's essentially asking for root-level access, it wants everything, even stuff that has nothing to do at all with the app itself (such as turning on my flashlight, or placing phone calls, or editing my contacts).  It's obvious that DJI doesn't give a wet slap about my privacy per se, nor did their engineers take the time or effort to engineer the app to request minimal permissions.  I don't see it as sinister, just lazy-- it's easier to just request global permissions.  Which cares the willies out of me, because my phone is where I live.  What I have and do on my phone, outside of DJI GO 4, is none of DJI's business.  Whereas I don't mind whatever the app does on the CrystalSky, because it's their hardware, and there's nothing of mine there except the drone-flying stuff, which *is* DJI's business.  So I'm a lot more comfortable from that aspect, too.
2017-7-16
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MARSAN
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Twirlip Posted at 2017-7-16 07:30
Regarding "back to square one with CrystalSky"-- No, not so much, I think it's  much less of a concern there, for several reasons.

First, I don't live on the CrystalSky, the way I live on my phone.  I use it only for flying the drone.  Whereas my phone is how I stay in contact with the world and vice versa, and I carry it everywhere with the expectation that its charge will last all day.  Phone running out of juice in the middle of the day when I'm far from home = serious inconvenience.

OK, point taken.

I use my Samsung Galaxy S8 to fly my Mavic and even after having emptied the four Mavic batteries, I hardly notice any battery drain on my Samsung, which is in fact recharged by the RC during the flight period.
2017-7-16
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Twirlip
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MARSAN Posted at 2017-7-16 07:43
OK, point taken.

I use my Samsung Galaxy S8 to fly my Mavic and even after having emptied the four Mavic batteries, I hardly notice any battery drain on my Samsung, which is in fact recharged by the RC during the flight period.

Yeah, my problem was never the app hosing my phone in flight-- it actually worked great, I didn't have any of the crashing problems other folks have described.

My problem (which no longer exists, since now I'm using the CrystalSky instead of my phone) was that it was sucking up power all day long 24/7, when I wasn't flying.  Although thanks to the helpful advice in this thread, I found that force-killing the app "solved" that problem, too.
2017-7-16
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PSDTrainer
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Reading the thread, I experienced the same issue, with my Samsung Galaxy S7. I've had my Mavic for a little over a week, and have logged a dozen flights, but I also noticed the battery was getting sucked down, rapidly. My phone is only 2 1/2 months old, and the battery (depending on texts, calls etc, is typically at 70-80% at the end of the day.
I also did the "close all" option, (the "square" button on the left side of the bottom of the screen) after using the app and it seemed to fix it. After reading this thread, I opened my battery monitor and saw the DJI Go app, is STILL using 1.9 % battery, even though I haven't used it in a few days.
Force Close seemed to work also.
Aside from that, has anyone else experienced the app just shutting down mid flight?
2017-7-16
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MARSAN
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Twirlip Posted at 2017-7-16 07:50
Yeah, my problem was never the app hosing my phone in flight-- it actually worked great, I didn't have any of the crashing problems other folks have described.

My problem (which no longer exists, since now I'm using the CrystalSky instead of my phone) was that it was sucking up power all day long 24/7, when I wasn't flying.  Although thanks to the helpful advice in this thread, I found that force-killing the app "solved" that problem, too.

I can confirm that the DJI GO 4 app (Android) was using considerable CPU power, but in Android 7.0 this problem is solved as such apps are now put to sleep automatically without much delay, when they are not in use anymore.
2017-7-16
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MARSAN
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PSDTrainer Posted at 2017-7-16 08:10
Reading the thread, I experienced the same issue, with my Samsung Galaxy S7. I've had my Mavic for a little over a week, and have logged a dozen flights, but I also noticed the battery was getting sucked down, rapidly. My phone is only 2 1/2 months old, and the battery (depending on texts, calls etc, is typically at 70-80% at the end of the day.
I also did the "close all" option, (the "square" button on the left side of the bottom of the screen) after using the app and it seemed to fix it. After reading this thread, I opened my battery monitor and saw the DJI Go app, is STILL using 1.9 % battery, even though I haven't used it in a few days.
Force Close seemed to work also.

Is your Samsung Galaxy S7 running Android 7.0?
If it is, in Device Maintenance tap Battery and then tap the 3-dot menu at the top right for the Advanced Settings. Make sure App power monitor is On.
2017-7-16
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PSDTrainer
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It is now, thank you!
2017-7-16
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Speleo-flyer
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Yes, I am seeing exactly the same.
2017-7-18
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Speleo-flyer
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I have exactly the same problem, running on Sony XA Ultra and Android 7.   I am fairly sure it did not occur before the latest DJI update (.900) and/or the recent update to Android 7.    I will try the workaround ...
2017-7-18
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Speleo-flyer
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MARSAN Posted at 2017-7-16 09:00
Is your Samsung Galaxy S7 running Android 7.0?
If it is, in Device Maintenance tap Battery and then tap the 3-dot menu at the top right for the Advanced Settings. Make sure App power monitor is On.

Hmm, I have a Sony XA running Android 7.  It has no 'device maintenance' item.  There's Settings -> Battery, but that has no 'Advanced settings' in its menu.    Ideas?
2017-7-18
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Tombolian
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Holy cow! That's what killed my phone's battery!!!! I was 'testing' with my new Galaxy J3 (which works just fine even though not supported) and to my surprise, 1 day after 'testing', the phone battery was completely dead.  I sure am glad I read these forums.  Thanks everybody!!!
2017-7-18
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MARSAN
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Speleo-flyer Posted at 2017-7-18 07:26
Hmm, I have a Sony XA running Android 7.  It has no 'device maintenance' item.  There's Settings -> Battery, but that has no 'Advanced settings' in its menu.    Ideas?

In the Settings on my Samsung Galaxy S8 there is an option called "Device maintenance" (Battery, Storage, Memory).
If you don't have this on your phone, then it must be a Samsung thing only.  
2017-7-18
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Pumavic
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Speleo-flyer Posted at 2017-7-18 07:22
I have exactly the same problem, running on Sony XA Ultra and Android 7.   I am fairly sure it did not occur before the latest DJI update (.900) and/or the recent update to Android 7.    I will try the workaround ...

They basically are just enabling battery optimization, which probably on yours like on my HTC U11 all apps already are unless they are system apps or any that you select to not optimize.  Anyway to ensure that the app is not running all you need to do is swipe it away in Recent apps and that should kill it, running 7.0 or later. Check it's battery usage at that point and see if it remains there later or if it increased. I've only flown once or twice after the last update and haven't noticed any sort of battery drain at all, or even before.
2017-7-18
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ShadyDealer
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Lucas775 Posted at 2017-7-14 18:16
What does this do to iphones?

Not a lot. Modest power reduction and helps those that feel nauseous easily when animations are prevalent.
2017-7-18
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Peter P
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Samsung S8 notified me app is consuming approximately 1%/hour and put it asleep. I also recommend killing it after flight.
2017-7-18
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AuroraHunter
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Samsung Note 10.1 2014. Android 5.1.1. Dji Kills my battery. Always force close app when done using. This is stupid and no reason for it. I switched to an Ipad now I don't have this problem anymore.

2017-7-18
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MARSAN
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Peter P Posted at 2017-7-18 11:30
Samsung S8 notified me app is consuming approximately 1%/hour and put it asleep. I also recommend killing it after flight.

Not necessary to "kill" the app.
Putting DJI GO 4 to sleep works extremely well on the Samsung Galaxy S8.
In fact, DJI GO 4 is permanently asleep when not in use.
Thank you Samsung!
2017-7-18
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Peter P
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Yes, either kill or put to permanent sleep mode (Samsung feature as far as i know). Just keeping it in bg consumes battery.
2017-7-23
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Twirlip
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Interestingly, even on the CrystalSky it kills the battery (the CrystalSky is running Android 5.1 so it doesn't have the power-management features that came along later).

It takes longer to drain the battery, since the CrystalSky's battery is much bigger than a phone's... but I found that my CrystalSky got completely drained from near 100% starting charge in just a few days of sitting around the house.  However, I found that turning off Wi-Fi stopped it from hogging power.  Apparently that's the thing that kills the battery-- as long as there's any network connection, the DJI GO 4 app keeps up an incessant, continuous stream of network traffic, both transmitting and receiving.  What on earth it could possibly be doing, I have no idea-- I can't think of any legitimate reason for it to be doing data transmission in the background.

Anyway, turning off the Wi-Fi on the CrystalSky solved the problem.  That's a reasonable option on CrystalSky, since it doesn't really need connectivity most of the time (I can just turn on the WiFi briefly when I need to sync flight records, or download an update, or something), though of course that wouldn't be a reasonable option for a phone.
2017-7-23
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