I will be the contrarian and offer that it makes little sense to be wed to hardware that is more than a decade old, actually I think closer to 15 years old. The best example of the problems associated with this approach is when Lionel was trying to get new Legacy handhelds made. They did, eventually, and that is a credit to their commitment to the customer but being bound to such old hardware creates risks and problems that no business wants to contend with. Further, I am sure MTH has done market research to support the move to the app, not just Mike's personal preferences. The app will prove more reliable than the handhelds, which eat batteries quickly and have a tendency to have that thumbwheel wear out prematurely.
Further, for anyone in the hobby who is reasonably young, like those kids we always talk about wanting to attract, the app is much more intuitive. Both of my boys use the MTH app to control the trains. The other handheld controls remain unused except when I run them. If this biggest challenge in the hobby is attracting new, younger entrants, the handhelds are dinosaurs and are no longer worth the cost to maintain.
At some point this debate will go away as there will be direct Bluetooth control of the full suite of Legacy and DCS features. I suspect they could do it now, but neither Lionel or MTH wants to make their proprietary box-based control systems obsolete, at least not yet. Lionel is giving us a glimpse of this with some of the LC+ product. More of that will come, most certainly.
