Coming from someone who has to commute via South Western railway into London everyday.
Sad state of affairs for Germany.
The website and app work well, in my experience. It's all pretty sleek and modern, too. It's the one area they do a good job in, to be honest.
What? The app is infamous for just "forgetting" tickets and when you get caught you HAVE to pay a fine and no they will not accept screenshots. You will win in court but have fun paying for everything in advance.
Citation needed. I've never heard of this being an issue (certainly not an "infamous" one) and almost everyone I know constantly travels by train and uses the app regularly. Maybe you're mixing things up with Deutschlandticket apps by regional transport associations, but that's not DB's fault.
Tickets get hidden from the default view once they're expired, but that's to be expected and you can press the prominent "Previous trips" button to see them.
No PDFs or print-outs or forms are needed.
Yes, you still get a PDF ticket sent to your email, but you aren't required to use it.
Could be a force of habit for UK but that's mostly how we do tickets. Printing is usually still an option.
You can scan and add your QRs (or more correctly Aztec barcodes) in DB Navigator app already. If you bought it via your own account (instead of your company buying it), you don't even need to do it. The tickets automatically appear.
DB Navigator is one of the best transport apps and already implements some caching. However you're ultimately tied to cell network or WiFi in train for certain othet apps and the quality of implementation. PDFs don't expire.
I agree that the delays are unacceptable, but the official app is great w/ digital tickets + seat registration, you don't need the PDF at all (it's even optional during checkout, so if you don't like them you can just uncheck the box lol)
The ticket office did have impressive throughput and lines building up.