Having just received my phantom yesterday I am torn as to update the firmware or not.   How can I tell which version is actually on (in?)  my bird? I know it is a guessing game but when do you suspect dji will release a newer/more stable update?

I got mine Friday. I updated. did the ios app too! Frick it! there are plenty that all is good. updates are there for a reason. if it freaks and crashes, deal with it then. odds are better that it is a good update. just re calibrate and cross fingers. anything can happen even if you didnt update. Then it would be, "why didnt you update?"we wont cover it. who knows. Ill be trying it out today.just be smart about it and stay low and slow and look for anything that dont seem right. land it and deal with it then

Hi tcoleyrn and welcome aboard.
l'm one of those people who hasn't updated my FW or my app. Everything's perfect and l'm happy with it as it is so it's staying put until it has to be updated.
Chances are if you just got it it's already at the latest FW. Here's how you can check. Go into the app camera page and click the four dots in the top-right corner. Out of the icons down the left side of the pop up box click the bottom one with the four dots. Scroll down to the bottom and click on About.

I wonder how many threads about "to update or not" there will be ;-)

If you update the firmware, you will be experiencing all the problems that the new firmware brings to you.  I can't fly with the new firmware because I'm constantly losing signal. Or it will say IMU Initialization failed. Or the Gimbal is overloaded (or something like that).

The new Firmware is a disaster.  

Rigworker Posted at 2015-6-30 23:57
I wonder how many threads about "to update or not" there will be ;-)

My guess is many.
Since there is no official word from DJI on anything, ever, we owners have to share information with the people new to the forum and to DJI.
I don't think anyone new can be expected to pore through every thread on FW to get the latest answer so they will continue to ask the question, which really is "where are we at with this FW issue now". Again, DJI is dropping the ball so people are going to need an update update

Updated rc and bird today with latest FW. No problem at all.
17min flight total 1900m, max height 35m max distance about 150m.
However I got gimbal overload for a few second I thought it was bra is the camera was touching the grass , moved it to another place and message disappeard.

My first flight after updating to the latest firmware i got an "ultrasonic system error". I'm not flying until DJI fixes this issue in an update.

The evening before the update, I was flying mine in the cul-de-sac in front of my house. I just switched from a PV2+ to my P3Pro and was marveling at how precisely it could hover, about 3 feet above the pavement. Then I could fly it from side to side across either side of the street, up over the curb and onto sidewalk or grass, and the P3 would adjust it's hover exactly for the height of the curbs, about 5 inches adjustment, on either side of the street. It would return to 3 feet over pavement and then hop up another 5 inches when it passed over a curb. I called my wife to look at it I was so thrilled...

Then...the "update"

It's not safe to fly, any further discussion at this point is purely obfuscation.

duke@thetrustas Posted at 2015-7-1 06:40
The evening before the update, I was flying mine in the cul-de-sac in front of my house. I just swit ...

I updated last Friday.  Fly it every day since but not very far because I have not been able to get GPS lock since the update.

duke@thetrustas Posted at 2015-7-1 06:40
The evening before the update, I was flying mine in the cul-de-sac in front of my house. I just swit ...

It's a magnetic declination problem, which has previously been fixed for inspire...The bird is trying to fly to magnetic north and realigns with Gps, but because it is out it swings around in little loops...uncorrected the circles increase until it spirals out of control.
you can control the spirals..but you have to work hard and if you are close to things it could turn to disater. You certainly don't want to fly out of sight....Ive been flying it manually and have no problems as soon as I fly using gps it goes out.
Have been told by Dji, to ignore gimbal overload problem if youre gimbal is orientated correctly

had my 1st flight today. I did all the updates. calibrated everything.
It was freakin awesome!!  It flew like a champ! So easy to fly. so responsive. Perfect!!   Biggest smile i have had in a loooong time!