About the new Beta Interface...

the phone app & web app now show the same data, so you lose the customability, I've now reverted to the non beta

How did you revert the phone app? I tried the Beta as well and prefer the original.

In Connect go to settings, top of page click on  Beta Program and turn off toggle.

So I decided to revert back to the original today. The beta is just not good. I really tried to like it but the layout just doesn't make sense. I find myself constantly asking why this and why that? Now if Garmin decides to add more featurs or information to better help understand the changes I'll try it again at a later date. 

I also agree. I'm a ~9 year Connect fan - I run, swim, do triathlons, hike, and use it for work in a variety of other ways. I even use it for research as an academic. What pulled me to Garmin and kept me through several devices has been how well so many different statistics I care about were summarized in the previous (Live) layout in a very concise and accessible way. With a partial scroll, I could see my current steps, intensity minutes, HR, Stress, status, yesterday's metrics, and other data in a very visually appealing way. Now I have a single number (e.g. steps) filling up the whole screen and I need to swipe or scroll to see one other metric or summary at a time. It seems like a step backward rather than forward. I see the value in emphasizing flexibility since different users may care about different things. However, it would be great if the new Connect could have options for showing the traditional, more concise displays with a lot of data for those of us who like to see it all in one place. Just my two cents...  

Totally agree, yes maybe the mobile app needed a bit of an update, however, there was totally no need to mess with the web app, also as a beta program it seems really lacking with communication only in one direction, with no feedback to the beta testers from Garmin

Agree. On the first page and for a quick overview I only want to scroll vertically. I would never use the additional screens of "In Focus".

Also the "See All" button for "At a Glance" is at the top. But first I would prefer to see always all tiles. Scrolling down is so easy - why bother with additional buttons. But if a button then it should be a "Show more" button at the bottom. Currently I scroll down. I think: oh, there are tiles missing. Scroll up, press the "See All" button. Scroll down to the additional tiles. Wonder if it can be made more complicated. 

Why not allow to freely position tiles. Per row either one full width or two half width tiles. And it should be possible to optionally add row separators so that multiple tiles can be visually combined or separated.

I'm also not that happy with the button for the main menu at the bottom right because the menu itself is of course oriented top left. And I usually do not need the two icons at the top left (Profile/Settings and Inbox).

I agree with every point you have made. I hate everything about it!

Why such a complicated, nested start page?
Simply all existing analyses, one below the other, freely selectable and configurable in sequence in one line.
Done

And keep the App view independent from the mobile view: low res small portrait screen vs highres large landscape screen. It does not make sense to have the same layout on both, there is no need for scrolling or expanding items on desktop while it has unused space on the sides.

Instead of messing up a working layout they missed the chance to actually improve and fix stuff:

Mobile App:

1. Make the Activity List in the side menu populate itself by pinning the users most actually used Activity Types. Currently you pinned a lot of activities regardless if the users has ever done any of them and therefore wasting space.

2. Add a word filter to search for activities.

3. Allow more overlays for the track graphs for example SUP (missing speed overlay), or basically allow it for any activity with a recorded track.

4. Users should be able to select if they want a speed or pace graph (again SUP only supports pace, no speed on mobile app, both are available in the web interface)

5. Do a different evaluation if an activity is recorded as an indoor variant (GPS off), currently you still try to evaluate speed, distance, moving time based on GPS that of course all shows 0 (as GPS was not used) better: if GPS is off in the activity, give us other stats, instead of showing us all those empty GPS based data-fields, like heartrate, movement time based on intervals (active / pause), steps per interval

6. fix that that first interval is falsely labeled as "pause" in "other"

7. Allow track trimming in the mobile app (don't repeat that annoying bug the web interface has where it zooms out to show the whole track once you move the slider to adjust a little bit at the end, making it impossible to see what you are doing)

8. Add some more cool Instagramable templates to share activities with friends, those work as advertisement for Garmin too.

Overall Interface / Web App:

1. Allow default gear to be setup for every activity- and subtype. Maybe even allow photos of the gear. And more gear statistics, not everything is measured with GPS, sometimes usage time could be valuable (overall time, active time, excluding pause time for example climbing shoes).

2. Give us evaluation tools for strength training progress like: strengthlevel.com/

3. Fix that annoying trimming bug where it zooms out to show the whole track once you move the slider to adjust a little bit at the end, making it impossible to see what you are doing)