My DJI Camera Wiped Three Vacations of Photos Without Any Warning
The DJI Osmo Pocket 3 I bought from abroad with great excitement in April caused one of the biggest disappointments of my life. I merely touched the device's screen, and with no warning or confirmation prompt whatsoever, it instantly formatted the SD card and erased all the data on it. Without even a single "are you sure?" step, all the photos and videos we had taken across three vacations vanished in a single second.
This device is said to be designed especially for amateur users — people who aren't very familiar with technical details — but I felt like there was zero care shown for something as fundamental as the safety of people's memories. Not a single frame could be recovered; this shook me emotionally far more than it was just a technical issue. I felt as though memories I could never get back had been taken from me, and this whole process was genuinely exhausting for me psychologically.
After the incident, I contacted DJI's customer service center and explained the situation in detail, but they told me they couldn't offer support on this and closed the matter. When I later saw that they had made the interface require a swipe gesture, I honestly felt a bit mocked, because a small interface tweak like that doesn't bring back the memories that were lost that day.
We also tried to recover the data ourselves, but we weren't able to get any results. The device, which I paid about $527 for, has now become an item that ruins my mood every time I look at it, and I've grown cold toward the DJI brand — I've even become reluctant to film anything at all.
What I expect from DJI is for them to recognize the harm caused by this design flaw, to develop an interface and confirmation mechanism that genuinely prioritizes data safety and that amateur users in particular can use with confidence, and to offer me a reasonable, human-centered solution that takes into account the loss and disappointment I've experienced.
