Xiaomi MI Drone vs DJI Phantom 3 Standard Tear-Down Review

Xiaomi has released Xiaomi smartphones, Xiaomi earphone, Xiaomi tablet pc, Xiaomi miband, etc at the most competitive price.So will it still be valid for Xiaomi mi drone ?  So we will tear down this Xiaomi MI Drone 1080p version which sells at 2,499 yuan, $400 and DJI Phantom 3 standard version to check which one is better in its quality design.

Body Tear-Down

Xiaomi screwdriver only can remove some parts of screws. If we need to tear down the whole body, we need to use three screwdrivers: 1.5mm hexagonal screwdriver, 2mm hexagonal screwdriver and Phillips screwdriver.

In order to tear down fast, we will tear the light flow auxiliary modules first at the bottom.

Xiaomi Light flow light flow auxiliary module part is made by Feimi company in Beijing which uses module design, and is easier to take it apart.

light flow auxiliary module inside

After taking the light flow auxiliary module parts apart,  it uses 1.5mm hexagonal screwdriver to tear down the screws outside of the four arms and LED lampshade. 2mm hexagonal screwdriver to take the rest screws apart.

After taking the LED lampshade apart, we can see LED lamp circuit board. The front two LED lights are white, and red on the left, green on the right, the circuit board color matches the light color accordingly.

You will find you can’t open the cover after you takes the front screws apart. Because there are the screws you can see, but also two fixed screws in the place of landing gear.

You need to take the whole cover apart  first, then you can see the two screws.

We take the whole cover down, it’s easy to take the front cover, then we will see the inner structure.

Inner Structure Analyst

The reason it has this kind of design is to fix the important parts when we use landing gear and fold.

The electrical modulation of Xiaomi MI Drone is installed in four arms. In order to cool it, it has cooling ports around the arm. If it rains, it’s very dangerous to get rain into the cooling port.

The chip of Xiaomi MI Drone electrical modulation is F850 chipset which is released in 2013. Although it’s not so advanced, it has developed rather maturely.

Its motor uses 2212 KV 800, if you have much power for DIY, you can try to upgrade it.

The port connecting with battery is used for encrypting.

Power touch point, two backup design, avoid poor contact.

GPS and gyroscope modules are firmly protected, this structure is quite solid. It is full of different sponge, which can reduce the vibration largely.

On the back of GPS chip is covered by electromagnetic shielding layer. Gyroscope is below the drone.

This is the receiver covered by metal shield.

Xiaomi mi drone flight control module is below GPS, protected well.

Open the shielding cover, we can see the main control chip ARM STM32 F407 VGT6 which is from  stmicroelectronics, which is advanced micro controller based on ARM 32, and its inside core is ARM Cortex™-M4F. Xiaomi mi drone has one more visual sensor system than DJI Phantom 3.

memory card of flight box, gimbal connector and TJA1057 (CAN transceiver).

The remote control dismantling

Remote shell of screws are hidden, four screws were located in the lower part of the grip and at the top of remote control.

Rocker and the mainboard is not in the same side of the remote control, need to pull the rocker line to separate the front and back cover of the remote control.

Remote control rocker and ordinary rc remote control has no much difference. And it has also add the miniature bearing with nice details.

Remote control board, a receiver, transmission, batteries and other functional modules are fixed on the back shell.

Main board and the installation of the remote control are located in both sides of mobile scaffold container, connected by long stitches. Remote control chip has specific models,  ARM STM32 F103 RBT6.

The maximum transmission distance is up to 1000 meters for a 1080p version.

Mobile phone stents receive tank

Xiaomi MI Drone vs DJI Phantom 3 Standard version

DJI uses integrated main board design, all of sensors and chips are placed on the main board. This kind of design will reduce the storage of the body, but it will take high maintaining cost. If one part is broken, we need to change the whole board.

DJI has nice protected  gyroscope, there are all sponge in the plastic box,and they are metal box in the sponge. When opening the metal box, then we will see Gyroscope.

Conclusion

From the dismantling contrast, due to different ID, DJI Phantom 3 has different layout from Xiaomi mi drone.

The middle of Xiaomi mi drone is all battery, So the circuit part only is placed on the head of the drone which is very difficult for such kind of design. But it has some advantages such as lightweight design, portability, and lost maintaining cost.

DJI Phantom 3 has larger body space. So it can integrate all circuit together. And the battery and gimbal is under the body, so as to maintain well. But it has high maintaining cost and not be easy to take.

From the inner design and layout, DJI is more mature, from DJI Phantom 2 to DJI Phantom 3 with much experience. As for Xiaomi, they need to accumulate more experience in its reliability and stability for the market. But we can confirm that according to one year effort, they have produced Xiaomi mi drone with such kind of design and quality, it shows much stronger than other brands, don’t forget to use this coupon code: midrone to save a lot for you at $485 . You can enjoy coupon code: GBDJI3 to catch DJI Phantom 3 at $449.99 now.

Update on Sept.12:
XIAOMI Mi Drone 4K WiFi FPV RC Quadcopter
Coupon code: MI4KGB
SP: $396.99