Rumors that Sonos may roll back their app....

Suspect it is just that, a rumor.  They would need to have three apps live, S1, S2 and New otherwise the new Ace headphones would not work.  I think they would be better spending the time and effort fixing the new app, which like it of not, is the future for them.  That is unless it is easy and cheap to re-instate the old S2 app.

There is no way in the world that will return. The forthcoming fixes are intended to sort any remaining music library issues, amongst other things. (I assume you have updated the app since the many music library functions were reinstated?)

The reinstatement of the previous app is also highly unlikely. The more sites quote other sites, the more the nuances of the click-bait first article by The Verge will end up becoming gospel and people will expect it to return. All those articles are doing is fuelling further disappointment...

Agreed, SMBv1 isn’t coming back and that’s a fine decision, good riddance to it.

I personally think the old app coming back would be the smartest decision Sonos could make in the last four months, I hope it happens.

I am lucky in being able to roll the Android app back (.apk file) and use Windows app, so at least I can 100% always see my speakers, select radio stations and set sleep timers. 

This is insane that they didn’t roll back to the old app like 3 weeks in?!?!  Why are they hanging on to this POS experience . . . until I searched online, I was like “well, that was a good run with sonos; all the speakers are bricks now so will need to figure out what to use next”.   

I used to be THE largest fan of sonos, refered them to friends all the time.  I tell everyone now “don’t buy, keep looking”

Any brand loyalty that’s left is waning by the hour.   Give it up, cut your losses on the bad foray with the crappy new app with terrible confusing experience and also, ah, doesn’t work.  And just get us back to something that plays music on remote speakers!!!!   Please!!!

I think whatever Sonos do next it has to have a significant impact on the people suffering stability issues they didn’t have before the new S2 app. We’re long past the point where features should be taking priority.

Apart from software checks on network settings, for the mix of library and online services I use, the 16.1 firmware and 16.1 app still work against the current cloud api without any problems.

Where Sonos have painted themselves into a challenging corner is the Ace and Roam 2? requiring the new S2 app. It’s technical challenges, so solvable, but how much work is needed to do it? 🤷

If they just promote the previous app and or firmware to be the latest version, those owners will suddenly have non-working products.

To try and separate into an S2/S3 or an S2 (classic) / S2 split they could add an extra version to the S1/S2 style version code in the firmware 16.1 and release a firmware based off that which won’t try and upgrade and the same for the old S2 app.

The New app could be updated to enable a switch to that firmware, like the S2 → S1.

Short term that would allow people who can see all their products to downgrade if they wanted to.

The longer term challenge then becomes what happens in the future. With S1/S2 it appears to me there was a clear separation of local vs online features. With the current S2 they’re both online-centric, so depending how the cloud api is written it may need work to have versioned endpoints if the S2 (classic) and latest app are to continue co-existing. There is likely to be significant push back if an attempt is made to force everyone using S2(classic) to the latest app at some point in the future, especially if it doesn’t add anything new they want.

There also needs to be a solution for the people who can’t get their devices to show in the app or successfully perform firmware updates.

As I say… all technical challenges, so solvable, but how much work would be needed I have no idea.

@controlav I can’t find the thread where we were talking about discovery, but this may be of interest to you. I was snapping all the various settings before starting to try and break things during upgrade. In the tools page on the devices with 16.1 firmware, there is an mDNS Announce button, which presumably would force an mDNS announcement for troubleshooting discovery.

I'm just glad I stayed on S1 and feel genuinely sorry for all those that have had their systems made unusable by this new app.

What amazes me is how they refuse to step back to the older working app after all this time.

They have severely damaged their brand.

I'm also intrigued as to why the headphones are not set up as a Zone Player, surely that would be the main selling point?.

At a guess it would have needed to be a balance between battery life, connectivity and processing power.

The Qualcomm chip which has all the bluetooth connectivity, apt codecs, dsp, even a usb interface has a limited amount of processing power and memory/storage.

To become a Zone player it may be as simple as the Qualcomm chip isn’t powerful enough to run the enough of the required software stack.

Adding another processor, memory, storage means more power required so either a bigger heavier battery or a shorter battery life.

At the moment there is little in the way of low power Wifi chipsets although Qualcomm are working on one.The wifi chip on board, to my knowledge, is used for the Soundbar link similar to wireless surrounds, so not extended always on, just for when linked to the soundbar.

While people already have expectations of what a Zone Player should do a fair amount of that is going to need sacrificing without impacting battery and potentially using wifi far more, which then impacts battery.

Steel series are one of the few companies who make dual bluetooth and wifi headsets, aimed at the gaming market where low latency matters. They generally come with two batteries that last 10 hours each. While workable in the gaming market, that sounds like a hard sell to an audio market. 20 hour battery life assuming you remember to charge both batteries and carry them with you 😁

SMB v1 needs to stay gone, Sonos took too much bad press, mostly clickbait but still harmful over having it.

Anyone not able to provide current versions of SMB from their NAS can easily and cheaply set up an SMB gateway that will provide v2 and v3 on pretty much any computer that runs SMB. I used a Pi Zero here to play with that, under $20 for the full kit. Not currently using it as using the Pi to provide the SMB share and host my music was so easy.

The closest official explanation of this was covered on Reddit, basically what @sigh posited above.