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GoPro will relaunch the Karma drone later this year

GoPro will relaunch the Karma drone later this year

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It’s not dead yet

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GoPro Karma and stabilizer grip in photos

GoPro just issued a press release announcing plans to relaunch its Karma drone sometime later this year. The company says it is still finishing testing on getting Karma back in flying shape, and will share more detail in early February about this “global relaunch” of Karma.

Karma was originally launched in September of 2016, but the $799 drone was swiftly recalled (on election night, no less) just weeks after it went on sale in October. The reason for the recall? Some of the 2,500 units sold were falling out of the sky.

In addition to the news that Karma isn’t dead, GoPro’s release confirms that the problem with Karma was a “mechanical issue related to securing the drone’s battery.” This was the leading theory that The Verge’s Ben Popper honed in on just a few days after the recall.

The Karma recall was a rotten cherry on top of an already bad 2016 for GoPro, the stock price of which dropped throughout the year. The company laid off 15 percent of its staff three weeks after issuing the Karma recall — the second round of layoffs in 2016.