Didnt mean to be sarcastic, just posted the wrong link. The banggood one I linked is the obvious clone, they make no secret of it and I like them for it. I have 2 on order.
Cant find the other link, but this one will do to illustrate the point:
Amazon.com: Powerextra 15.2V 4480mAh LiPo Replacement Battery for DJI Phantom 3 Drones DJI Phantom 3 Professional,DJI Phantom 3 Advanced and DJI Phantom 3 Standard DJI Intelligent Phantom 3 Battery: Camera & Photo
Yeah I can tell by the label where they deliberately changed "phantom" with "compatible with PH3", but I wouldnt bet money others dont ship with a different label.
As for the blocking; it seems to be an afterthought and however it works, it cant be very sophisticated if the cloners 'cracked' it so quickly. Maybe DJI can, maybe they cant detect aftermarket products in the future, I'll find out. But even if they can -and Im sure the next Phantom will detect them reliably- do you really want DJI to block non OEM batteries? I respect your choice of wanting to fly a OEM battery, but wouldnt you be just as happy if the app informed you, but let us have the choice to fly with them or not? Let you benefit from lower prices on DJI batteries due to competition from the "cloners" ?
As for the risk associated with non oem parts; I think its mostly a red herring. Like all other components in our drones, batteries can and do fail, thats a fact of life; if you cant deal with that risk, you shouldnt fly something that relies on a single battery, or cant cope with a single motor failure. But these days, its pretty rare for them to fail spectacularly and in a way a platform so stuffed with sensors and intelligence cant cope with. A battery isnt magical or mystical, it just produces a voltage between 0 and 4.2v per cell, whether it has a DJI sticker or not. Ive been flying RC for decades and lipo's since they where introduced. In 100's of hours, Ive not had a lipo battery fail me in flight in a way that prevented me from landing. And I pretty much only use 'cheap' hobbyking batteries.
More over, these batteries are not actually produced by DJI, they just source the lipo cells from whatever factory gave them the best terms, no different than hobbyking or the cloners, and quite possibly they are sourced from the very same factories. There is no reason to think DJI batteries are in any way better and reviews dont show this either.
Finally, a fun fact. My friend works for a company that flies a sensefly ebee. Thats a ~€15K aerial platform. They fly with €99 aftermarket batteries after having received 2 DOA's from sensefly. Of course, sensefly doesnt try to block aftermarket products and since its business model doesnt rely on squeezing customers on overpriced batteries or spare cables, it will stand by its product regardless of what brand of battery you use. Perhaps there is a difference there.
edit: afterthought; if you had a DJI S900; what battery would you fly with? AFAIK DJI doesnt even sell batteries for it. So DJI tell you to trust a "clone" battery for their high end heavy lifter platform, but it would be too dangerous for their smallest consumer drone?
