The DJI Phantom Drone's Biggest Competition Is Designed by Ex-DJI Employees

​Betamax, VHS. Genesis, Nintendo. Playstation, XBox. Blu-Ray, HD-DVD. Microsoft, Apple. Android, iOS. Every great new tech has a platform battle, and the drone industry finally has its own.

Last week, DJI announced the Phantom 3, the followup to the world's most popular drone. Monday, competitor 3D Robotics announced the Solo, a powerhouse piece of tech that could give DJI its first ever real competition in the consumer drone space.

"DJI has never had a competitor, and now they do," Colin Guinn, chief revenue officer of 3D Robotics, told me. "That'll be interesting for them."

Before diving into the nuts and bolts of the Solo, it's important to note that Guinn is kind of at the center of this new rivalry. He was instrumental in the creation of the very first Phantom drone over at DJI and helped lead the company's North American operation for years. Guinn alleged in a court case that DJI, a Chinese company, tried to dilute his stake in the company (​the suit was eventually settled). He left the company, ​took four DJI employees with him, and now 3D Robotics is releasing the Solo, its first consumer drone under Guinn's leadership.

I don't know the specific details of his departure from DJI. I do know that he wants the Solo to be a Phantom killer. The Phantom has become extremely popular because it's easy to fly, now has some name recognition, and it's affordable (the Solo and Phantom 3 will both cost roughly $1,000). But Guinn says the brand is vulnerable.

"A big part of the origin of Solo wasn't, let's make a cool quadcopter—I developed the Phantom in 2012—it was, let's pinpoint the pain points of flying a drone and make one that solves all of those problems," Guinn said. "We just went down the list and quickly realized that we'd need to develop onboard computers to check off the boxes we wanted to check off."

The Solo is the first commercial drone with two onboard computer processors (they're identical 1 GHz processors running Linux—one in the controller and one on the drone). The onboard processors allow for more complicated camera maneuvers than have ever been available on a consumer drone. You'll be able to program the drone to fly between two waypoints, for example, leaving you free to manually control the camera. You'll also be able to program the gimbal, which aims the camera and holds it steady, to automatically pan at certain points.

"I want the beginner to be able to get the same shots that were previously only possible for the several-year trained drone pilot or camera operator," Guinn said. "I want you to be able to do a perfect cinematic camera tilt even if you're just learning how to fly."

You'll be able to take those shots with the GoPro you already have.

That last bit is important. DJI has designed its own camera for the Phantom 3 (and the Inspire 1, its entry-level professional drone). That means the camera works perfectly with the drone and can be easily controlled from the controller—you can stream video back to an iPad as you're flying, for instance, with no sweat.

Doing it with a third-party camera is another thing altogether. 3D Robotics has essentially hacked the GoPro (with some assistance from the company) to decode the video onboard the drone in real time using the onboard processor. It then sends the video using a long-range Wi-Fi antenna to the controller—Guinn says the whole thing happens so fast that the lag is not perceptible to the human eye.

"If there's something we can do the best in the world—flight modes, follow me, autopilots—we want to do it. But we don't know a lot about making a camera," Guinn said. "People want to fly GoPros, it's what they already have."

I haven't tried a Solo (and I haven't tried a Phantom 3, either), but I talked to a bunch of people in the industry at DJI's launch event last week. Half of them were talking about the Solo and what it'll be able to do. It's shaping up to be an Apple versus Android-level battle, they said. The assumption was that DJI makes the easily-accessible drone for the masses; 3D Robotics makes the more powerful, but more complicated drone for techies.

Guinn isn't into that analogy.

"Android is great, but the iPhone is a bit more of a pleasurable experience for me—it's faster and easier. That is Solo. It's easy, but it's also super powerful and customizable," Guinn said. "To me, it's more like, the Phantom and all the other drones are the smartphones that came before the iPhone. They could do cool things, but then the iPhone 3 came out with the app store and just blew everything away. Solo is that, for drones."

Without actually trying it, I don't know if he's right. But the onboard computers do seem like a real evolution in the technology. It's clear that 3D Robotics is swinging for the fences here—we'll be getting a tester unit in a couple weeks and will let you know if it lives up to the hype.