It was a month or so since my last flight session, so I was eager to get some good shots. However, my Mavic Mini caused me a lot of headaches. :/ First, let me preface by saying - all FW up to date. Batteries included. Everything nicely charged. The area where I was flying was well away from any airports and was "remote", compared to the city where I live (so not a lot of noisy WiFi in the area).
Once powered up, I had some issues getting a GPS signal on the Mini. Annoying, but expected - this can happen and I've played with enough GPS devices to understand that getting a reliable signal can take a minute or so.

Once I had a GPS signal, I found I could not fly further than 50m away (distance and height); no, my own settings were much, MUCH higher (200m height, 1000m distance). There were no errors nor warnings during take off; the drone would just slow down when reaching the 50m limit and the counter(s) in the bottom left would light red, indicating a limit. I've also checked if, by chance, payload mode wasn't turned on... it wasn't. I've used up almost 50% of a battery trying to get this to work. I eventyually decided to try and reboot the Mini (and swap batteries), and the problem was gone. But time and shots were wasted.

Next problem: the image preview would freeze, despite a fairly decent signal strength. This was unprecedented - the Mini was ~100m away at this point and I could see it responding to the flight controls very well, but the image was frozen with no indication of a weak signal. The channel display in the settings showed pretty much all the channels green. I've eventually managed to "fix it" by changing the channel to manual then back to auto. Again, flight time was wasted, but at least I managed to get some air-time using this battery.

My third battery - again I was faced with the freezing preview window, and this time around the trick of switching the drone to manual and back to auto channel modes didn't help.

I'm going to check the drones performance tommorrow flying around my home - but I'd like to know what the possible causes are. I'm especially worried about the 50m limit, since that was with no warnings whatsoever.

Were you flying w/ the prop. guards on ?

For the freezing video you may have a problem with Mobile Device incompatibility or bugs. It is normal it takes up to several minutes to acquire a GPS signal if the drone wasn't on recently.

m80116 Posted at 8-1 14:26
Were you flying w/ the prop. guards on ?

For the freezing video you may have a problem with Mobile Device incompatibility or bugs. It is normal it takes up to several minutes to acquire a GPS signal if the drone wasn't on recently.

No, no prop guards. Those, when put on, enforce payload mode which is then displayed on screen.

GPS taking a long time to aquire - I've already noted that this, while annoying, isn't really a problem. The strange 50m range limit and later issues with the preview were.

The freezing issue is nearly almost 100% down to set up and device used. What device are you using ? Is it on recommend list ? Have you put device in airplane mode.

How much gps did you have, I’m not talking about sat count but signal bars you should have 4/5 bars lit up to have good gps. Not having gps can restrict your height and distance, refer to manual.

Usually setting up in a different area open space should confirm if your environment is good or bad, so I’d advise to go to a totally different area free of interference and try flying from there.
You could also opt to post some logs if issue continues and you may get more help.

It's an interesting anomaly to see the payload mode being enforced, it usually happens for the prop guards. I think you should evaluate your props performance should they be flattened but visually appearing OK.

m80116 Posted at 8-2 05:36
It's an interesting anomaly to see the payload mode being enforced, it usually happens for the prop guards. I think you should evaluate your props performance should they be flattened but visually appearing OK.

However when the payload mode is detected, a message stating this is clearly displayed. It was NOT displayed in my case. I just got the "payload effect" with no message.

hallmark007 Posted at 8-2 03:48
The freezing issue is nearly almost 100% down to set up and device used. What device are you using ? Is it on recommend list ? Have you put device in airplane mode.

How much gps did you have, I’m not talking about sat count but signal bars you should have 4/5 bars lit up to have good gps. Not having gps can restrict your height and distance, refer to manual.

I'm using a Samsung S8, and it was not my first flight session. Whilst I've had some range performance issues in the past, I've never had them to this extent.

The especially odd thing about this was that normally, when there is some kind of connectivity issue, the top-right GUI indicator would display a weak signal and I'd get a clear as day warning notification. However this time around the indicator showed a strong signal, and there were no warning messages.

Admittedly, I don't fly with airplane mode on; I've never really needed in past sessions.