DJI’s foldable Osmo Mobile 3 could be the best smartphone gimbal

It’s here! DJI just launched their brand new smartphone gimbal, the DJI Osmo Mobile 3. It’s crowning feature? This new gimbal can actually fold!

Yes, this isn’t a joke, the gimbal can actually fold down practically in half, making it way more portable than its predecessor. That was honestly a big issue with the Osmo Mobile because the gimbal plus the carrying case took up a lot of space and simply didn’t make sense. But, with this new folding contraption, transporting this will be way more convenient.

Now, if you’re thinking that this is a completely novel idea, you’d be wrong because as far as I can tell, DJI practically ripped off borrowed heavily from the design of the Snoppa Atom–a crowd-funded 3-axis foldable smartphone gimbal. I can’t really say who had the idea first, but the two devices definitely have a lot of similarities.

But, as a consumer that’s a good thing because the DJI Osmo Mobile 3 does have a lot going for it. First off, we’ve got the new design with its oblique supporting arm. One of most annoying things with using most conventional smartphone gimbals is that the arm usually obstructs the ports on the right side of the smartphone. This means you can’t plug in cables to charge your phone, or use the 3.5mm headphone jack (if your phone still has one of those).

With this new oblique arm, it looks like you do get a lot more access to the ports at the bottom of your phone, but it’s hard to say at this point whether it’ll obstruct the movement of your gimbal. I suppose if you use something really big like a Rode Videomic Me, that won’t fly, but if it’s something smaller it just might work.

Another benefit with this new design is that it looks way more friendly to the ultra-wide angled cameras that are appearing on pretty much every smartphone right now. With conventional gimbals like the Osmo Mobile 2, when you switch to ultra-wide, your view is obstructed by one of the gimbal’s arms, and that’s really annoying. But with this, the arms are way out to the side, so it looks like you shouldn’t get much obstruction either. But, I haven’t tested it out yet, so take these observations with a grain of salt.

Alongside the new folding design, the Osmo Mobile 2 is chock-full of features you’ve come to expect from a DJI product via the DJI Mimo app. For starters, you get access to gesture control, which lets you use gestures to snap photos without needing to push a button. Besides that, you’ve also got Active Track 3.0 which is DJI’s object tracking feature that uses computer vision to identify and track a selected subject. Then, there’s stuff like Story Mode which looks like a quick way to edit and share recorded footage to social media similar to something like GoPro’s Quik app.

You also have convenient features like a bunch of buttons and dials on the gimbal that lets you control movement, zooming and switch between modes with ease. One cool feature is that you can actually double tap the mode button to switch your gimbal into portrait mode automatically. There’s also a Sport Mode, as well as creative modes like Hyperlapse, Panorama, Timelapse and Slow Motion, but that last one only works on iOS devices so far.

The Osmo Mobile 3 is priced at USD119 (~RM498) for the gimbal, or you can pick up the combo for USD139 (~RM582) that’ll include an Osmo Grip tripod and a carrying case. Currently, there’s no information on when the Osmo Mobile 3 will make it into Malaysia.

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