Thinking about this bit more, the problem is not the App, it is the entire digital user interface (UX).
I did try to communicate this with Giant, but I got bounced back to the, "Talk to your LBS", thing. LBS' are new to this all, and they are bike people, not tech people for the most part.
My background: I've worked in the tech world in aircraft electronics and in consumer facing applications. My role these days is in project management, and I am most passionate about ensuring that systems meet the business users goal. In other words, I prevent the tech team from running away with the show building something that is neat, but misses the necessary requirements. In order to do this I add a strong business advocate to the team. In my opinion, Giant did not/does not have a proper UX advocate on their team. Everything is askew, as though the development team built the stuff at their desks without trying it out, and more importantly, they built it without having a representative of the end user community giving feedback.
Six months ago I bought a Haibike Full Seven, with the Yamaha engine. I rode it a lot and managed to get around 50 miles/4,000 ft out of its 500wh battery. After a while, I wanted more range, so the Giant Trance, with a tunable App, and with 625wh +240wh boost pack checked all the boxes. I bought the bike and at first it seemed like it was a bit of magic. Cush ride on fire roads, lots of battery, built by a major manufacturer, and AN APP.
Within two rides I was second guessing my decision. The damn app went off line on my remote rides, so I could not see my battery values or alter the ride parameters. I was pissed, then noticed on this forum that everyone had this complaint and others about the App and generally getting info from the bike. I then hooked up my Garmin 830. Great, now I can see battery info! After the first ride I realized that was mostly bad info that was being displayed via ANT+ on Garmin. The battery shows 100% with or without the booster at first, and there is no way to tell what the value of each individual battery is. Yes the range changes, but that shows like 140 miles at the start of a 40 mile ride. I am in the blind. Additionally, once in a while my ride settings get set back to the default high power settings and I can't change these values until I am back within mobile range. I tried looking at the BLE data but that has the same handful of fields, with none of the information that I care about. What about current wattage (or amperes), 2nd battery status, miles/wh, and anything else that someone riding long distance would expect? It is very clear that nobody was advocating for the rider's digital experience when they designed this system. And that special firmware does not allow much user control and there is no information about how any of it works. We have to go up here to find out from others what there observations are. Nobody from Giant makes contact to clarify things or talks about soon-to-be released improvements, etc.
Then there is the bike's display itself, which consists of 5 dots for battery power. The same dot indicates between 20 and 39% of battery power. As a rider there is a big difference knowing where in that range the power is. There should be 10 dots, or a number somewhere that is displayed without spending another few hundred on various other displays.
My message to Giant is: The first 90% of this bike is an excellent product. The last 10 percent is a total letdown. It would have taken no more effort to build a useful user interface than the one you've developed. All your management had to do was look at Specialized and see what they had and copy many of those features. Apparently, nobody on the Giant technical team looked at things from a rider's perspector OR looked at what the competition had built. The last 10% of the design makes this product a miss for many of us. Giant needs to address this quickly.
And, why does this matter to me? It matters because the 625wh main battery and the 240wh Plus battery are not giving me anywhere near the range I'd expect, in relation to the 500wh Haibike with a similar Yamaha motor. I've been trying to figure out why and have no information to do so.
