Got a DJI drone as a birthday present and instead of having me install from the Play store they want me to install an apk directly from their website.
Does anybody know why this app isn’t on the play store? Is this legit or just a vector for malware?
DJI is a Chinese company. There is no Google Play in China and the Chinese alternatives for Google Play aren’t exactly popular in the west, so website APK downloads are the obvious way to serve both markets in case the Tencent/Play Store isn’t available for a particular device.
I wouldn’t recommend downloading APKs/.EXEs from random websites, but with DJI I would trust the downloads to be Official Enough. Compare it to downloading a setup.exe for your computer.
If you don’t trust the file (any file, really!), try uploading it to virustotal.com first. This will run the APK through a whole bunch of virus scanners, many of which will recognize Android malware as well.
However, don’t assume apps don’t have malware just because they’re on Google Play or the Apple App Store. Malware is routinely found on there as well. There’s a theoretical advantage of the unified stores, but huge companies can and have uploaded malware (like) content to these stores.
Lastly, if you have Google Play on your phone, you probably have Google’s antivirus, Play Protect, on your phone as well. It’s not exactly the best antivirus app but it’s probably Good Enough™ for these cases.