Dronium 3 flight time problem

Got this at Best Buy for christmas, my first drone. RTF it is a very forgiving copter for a first timer as it hasn't been wrecked in ten flights.
But is has something wrong I cannot figure out. Flight time is ONE MINUTE, then my control of the unit is lost and the thing slowly drifts to the ground.
I thought maybe the battery was draining too fast (even though the same battery will work immediately after both copter and transmitter are turned off and back on....but again for only a minute).
Bought another identical capacity battery just to see.....and it does the same thing.

Tried upping the "speed" (reaction time?) to its highest, but same thing.

Any ideas?

tallpall said:

Bought another identical capacity battery just to see.

Click to expand...

What kind does it use?

You need to meter the battery right off the charger. I'm assuming a typical 1 cell 3.7V LiPo. it needs to be ~4.2V when fully charged. When troubleshooting you can't assume anything. Could be a bad charger. You don't need a fancy meter ~$10 is fine.

vhttp://www.bestbuy.com/site/protocol-dronium-iii-ap-drone-with-remote-controller-green-black/5388108.p?skuId=5388108

Batteries come off the charger at ~4.3V. In fact, after a couple of the short flights, the batteries charge fully back in around 15 minutes. If discharged it would take at least an hour.

I wonder if this unit has a "safety feature" of shutting itself down if it loses signal? Hard to think that it's getting out of range as it's never been more than 75 feet from me. Started thinking along this line after seeing the following: 50 ft away, banking continuously to the right, it suddenly righted itself and started descending despite the command to keep banking. In all these terminations I lose complete control....no command works. It just slowly settles to the ground and the props stop spinning.