Android Devices no longer can connect to SonosNet

I'm going to miss being able to see the Sonos SSID more than the ability to connect directly.

"We do know some people have been using this feature, but ultimately we had to make the decision to remove it."

SOME people... Almost everyone is (was) using this fantastic feature. Why? whats the problem for you?
I will NEVER EVER buy your products again. That was a really appreciated feature!

I have seven of them in and around the house.

"We do know some people have been using this feature, but ultimately we had to make the decision to remove it."

SOME people... Almost everyone is (was) using this fantastic feature. Why? whats the problem for you?
I will NEVER EVER buy your products again. That was a really appreciated feature!

I have seven of them in and around the house.
Sonos have explained in their thread as much as they are willing. Ultimately this is propab;y due to getting new features, such as Google assist, implemented and usable across the entire speaker range. Sonos are compromised by the available memory on the older speakers.

Doubtless the outrage if they were to retire older units would be huge. For those using SonosNet there are at least alternatives. I agree that the communication for this change could have been better.

As for the almost everyone using this, that is a massive exaggeration. If you don't use android then this feature is not even available.

I"If you don't use Android" - so it's considered OK if it only affects half the user base then!?!?
My wife and I are utterly disgusted at the removal of this functionality, we live in an old thick walled house with wireless issues and have found that connecting to Sonosnet worked wonders for the range limitation (not solved as well by Wi-Fi extenders, etc) - OK so the speed was drastically reduced but that was always better than not being able to connect at all?
We espoused the excellence of this feature to friends and family as a good reason for sonos but will be doing so no more and will recommend they buy alternative music streaming solution from now on. As if the mindless and rubbish interface updates (often downgrades in usability and ease of use) was not enough, you go and do this. Shockingly awful behavior sonos team, I hope you lose custom and go to the wall with an ethos like this....seriously hacked off users here.

How pleasant to wish people's jobs are destroyed and a company fails.

Sonos didn't do this just out of spite, they have their reasons, but I agree they could have given some notice.

The "constant" updates are required to cater for the moving technologies and the different wrists thath people listen to music note. Just look at the vitriol aimed at Sonos because Google home was "late" in their eyes.

Besides the Android comment was not meant to be a jibe, that you want to take it as, but pointing out that as a non Android user we've had to find alternatives. For me that means home plugs.. and they have their issues and are not supported. I would be suprised of more than 20% of Android users even use Sonosnet, none of my friends who use Sonos were even aware of it.

Knowing the percentage of Sonos users using the direct connect would be interesting but I don't expect we will find out.

I found the Android to SonosNet option while looking for something else and thought it interesting. I never seriously considered using it for control though as trying to pump all my tablet data over SonosNet rather than my far faster home WiFi didn't sound like a good idea.

I find that using a good quality Access Point (Ubiquity AC Lite) gives me all the coverage I need, Ubiquity has several other APs that offer even more range or you could just hook up several of them for better coverage. As long as you keep Sonos on SonosNet and off your WiFi there are many possibilities for WiFi in difficult situations.

This chance is really, really unhelpful. I now cannot control Sonos from the more remote parts of the house. Sonosnet was great for this. Now effectively I have to move rooms to try and set the music playing.....woeful

I understand that you need to make room for new features to be able to be competitive on the market.
But, let me as a customer chose. It's completely ok for me IF you tell me "If you want Google assist, then you can't use sonosnet". Fine, then I make the choise to being able or not to use Google assist.
Let your customers choose!

I understand that you need to make room for new features to be able to be competitive on the market.
But, let me as a customer chose. It's completely ok for me IF you tell me "If you want Google assist, then you can't use sonosnet". Fine, then I make the choise to being able or not to use Google assist.
Let your customers choose!
You csnnot hsve user specific firmware. This is a completely impracticable request. This request could be made for any and every festure, not just the one that happens to matter to you at this time. Just impossible.

I understand that you need to make room for new features to be able to be competitive on the market.
But, let me as a customer chose. It's completely ok for me IF you tell me "If you want Google assist, then you can't use sonosnet". Fine, then I make the choise to being able or not to use Google assist.
Let your customers choose!You csnnot hsve user specific firmware. This is a completely impracticable request. This request could be made for any and every festure, not just the one that happens to matter to you at this time. Just impossible.

Not impossible at all. Our company uses that technic every day. Customers choose which modules/features they need för their business. And we also say "feature A is not possible to combine with feature B, select only one of them"
It works great. 🙂

Yes, it could be possible, hardly anything is impossible given enough time and money. But in the case of Sonos it is impractical to fork firmware for such a devices.

Sonos has a model that enables ALL it's Smart speakers ever produced to still function fully as part of their Home Speaker solution. Some of those models are more than 10 years old and so have limited memory and processors compared to the latest models. They have probably decided that Home automation is a higher priority than Sonos net access, and given there are alternatives to Sonos Net they are probably right. Some more notice would not have gone amiss though.

I don't know what business you are in but if you have a model where you can customise such things then that would have been part of the design at the outset. Forking code, for software or firmware, is rare practice in IT companies I have worked in and is used as a short term fix only normally.

I understand that you need to make room for new features to be able to be competitive on the market.
But, let me as a customer chose. It's completely ok for me IF you tell me "If you want Google assist, then you can't use sonosnet". Fine, then I make the choise to being able or not to use Google assist.
Let your customers choose!You csnnot hsve user specific firmware. This is a completely impracticable request. This request could be made for any and every festure, not just the one that happens to matter to you at this time. Just impossible.Not impossible at all. Our company uses that technic every day. Customers choose which modules/features they need för their business. And we also say "feature A is not possible to combine with feature B, select only one of them"
It works great. 🙂
Application software modules is one thing. This approach would be utterly impractical for embedded firmware images in a heterogeneous network system.

As it is, there are different images for each hardware target. Imagine the complexity of providing images for every permutation of features, for each platform. On top of which each firmware variation would have to be regression tested on the network against every other variation, running on every other device. It would consume so much resource no release would ever make it out the door.

Not impossible at all. Our company uses that technic every day. Customers choose which modules/features they need för their business. And we also say "feature A is not possible to combine with feature B, select only one of them"
It works great. 🙂

Uh huh. And your company gives it away for free, making all its revenues from hardware sales, like Sonos does? And it does this for embedded firmware?

The idea that a user could be offered a choice between Google Assistant and Android connection to SonosNet, as if these were separate software modules, is utterly ludicrous.