is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
DJI barely sells drones in the United States anymore. The shelves are bare; resellers are jacking up prices. It appears an unofficial ban at US customs is to blame. But on Amazon, you can now buy a drone that’s a a dead ringer for the DJI Mini 4 Pro — the SkyRover X1 — for a reasonable $758. And that’s probably because DJI made it happen.
There’s evidence suggesting so, and DJI was not able to immediately deny the SkyRover X1 was a DJI product when we reached out.
As reported by DroneXL, security researchers have discovered the SkyRover X1 not only has the same specs, features, and an incredibly similar app to the one DJI provides for its drones, it uses DJI’s own online infrastructure.
“It has connections to @DJIGlobal @DJISupport @DJIEnterprise via @DJIFlySafe references, and ‘AASKY’ references,” tweeted Kevin Finisterre, a hacker who’s made headlines for digging into DJI’s products in the past. Finisterre was even able to log in with his DJI username and password.
Image: Kevin Finisterre (X)
Another security consultant, Jon Sawyer, discovered the SkyRover app even uses the same encryption keys as DJI, and that the company which created the app only did a rudimentary job of trying to hide its tracks, renaming instances of “DJI” to “xxx” or “uav.”
But that’s not the only shady thing going on: someone doesn’t want you to know this drone is a DJI-alike. After drone reviewer AirPhotography took flak in the comments of his SkyRover X1 review for not pointing out obvious similarities to DJI, he revealed that he’d agreed not to mention any other drone brands in the video in order to secure the review unit. “That was their only stipulation,” he wrote.
Image: YouTube
AirPhotography has since thought better of this, it seems; he now has an extra video that directly compares to the Mini 4 Pro, calling it “suspiciously similar”:
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