Ampler is in the process of moving to an in-house built connectivity platform, which means new firmware, mobile application and backend systems. In this period of transition, there are bikes that are running the previous firmware and the new one, which means two apps are available simultaneously for some time.
Generation 2 models come with the new firmware out of the box and are fully compatible with the new app.
How do I know if I can use the new app?
When you bought your Ampler after August 2021, you have a 90% chance of being able to use the new app already. You won't be able to use the old app (black icon) at all.
When can I update?
Anyone can update now – simply download the app and follow the instructions.
What's a firmware, and what is different to the old one?
Have a look at this article, where we explain the differences between old & new.
Why do I have to switch?
For the old app, our customers experienced a lot of connectivity issues, which proved really hard to troubleshoot and basically shut many Ampler riders out of using an app altogether. We also encountered issues, such as lost odometer data, which we could not fix from our end.
The only sensible solution was to develop our own app, over which we have full control. For this, we had to build a brand-new firmware for the bikes as well. The goal was to have it run on all of our bikes sold since 2016, across all phone operating systems. This took us over 2 years to achieve.
What happens to the old app?
The old app stopped being functional on 18.07.2022. The external developers will make login not possible any more and delete customer data for privacy reasons. It is not possible to have both apps running at the same time, since the old app will not receive updates any more and might thus be a security risk.
Will there be a difference in functionality?
- Better integration with our systems (display bike data, remote diagnostics etc.).
- Faster and more reliable connectivity across devices.
- Automatic ride statistics recorded by the bike and timestamped for uploading, limiting the dangers of losing odometer data.
- Authorisation of your bike & button locking.
- Usable in-app notifications (maintenance reminders, errors.)
- More modern UI with a clean dashboard and ability to switch range display with speed etc.
- Outside the app: from the bike button, enabling “lights-only, assist off” mode without the use of app.
- Outside the app: eliminating the danger of triggering factory reset (rear wheel is spinning) by accident through the button.
- The ability for us to expand the app with more features and constant updates.
Functionalities which will change:
- The new app will not have navigation or trip recording functions any more
The functionality did not work well, was not used by most beyond a few tries. Apps like Komoot & Google Maps already do a better job navigating than our old app was able to.
There are nonetheless ways to switch levels and navigate at the same time: In Android, you can use our new app with the split-screen feature (multi-window support), and Komoot, Google Maps & Apple Maps have a window-in-window feature if you want to use both our app and navigation or trip recording.
Our previous app had different ways to adjust the motor support.
“Power” & “Multiplier” now move linearly under the “Assist amount” slider until they reach 70%. At this point, the power reaches its maximum and only the Multiplier” continues to grow to the previous maximum of “150%” in the background until the assist amount shows 100%.