new app update is SLOW. SLOW. SLOW!!!!

If anyone is as frustrated as me with the new Sonos app, you can download and use the sonophone app while Sonos rectify their flawed app.  It works perfectly and we get to control our music again.

If I were in charge of Sonos, in fact if I were any employee of Sonos, I’d be so embarrassed by this slow and painful App. It needs to be replaced with the previous working version immediately and the new update should not be released until it has been fully tested and all the reported bugs addressed. 

Why is Sonos silent on the matter?

Apart from the unmissable green banner at the top of every forum page with a link to the letter from the CEO and details of the forthcoming fixes via subsequent app updates…?

Why are some people in denial that the new app is flawed? Why are some people trying to convince US that the problem is with US and with our systems? 
 

Very many users are having the same problems  (since the app update)  Our systems worked fine before the update - they are now virtually unusable. 

The problem is with Sonos. The CEO has admitted this and said that they are working to rectify it. 
 

But with random updates over months - NOT GOOD ENOUGH !! 

I’ve not seen anyone in denial that the app is flawed. No-one is trying to convince anyone that the problem is solely with the user, but there is a very strong tendency amongst those with issues to resist making any changes to help it work. As I have said before, no-one should have to make any changes, but sometimes a tweak can deliver a fully working system. But sometimes it won’t, but a vociferous majority won’t even try. 

Those you are referring to - i.e. those “in denial of a flawed app” - are simply those whose app works for them. But even they (and I am included in this group) recognise there is a long way to go, and can see that there are still issues (as shown by the amount of fixes still to be released in app updates). 

I agree with @Rhonny here, the new Sonos App works fine in my own case, but I accept that I can’t perform any queue editing or queue playlist management at this moment in time, as I’m waiting for those features, which are still in the development pipeline, but the music playback on my own system has never stopped and I’ve not got any issues with mDNS device discovery, or group volume control like some have reported, but in many cases those kind of issues can be resolved with some simple changes and it’s why I often suggest folk perhaps contact Sonos Support, rather than switching to 3rd-party Apps that still use SSDP - which ’may’ have to switch to mDNS device discovery too at some point in the future… much better to get the problems resolved now with the new way the Sonos App works, rather than perhaps facing the same issues further on down the line.

If you have a minute, take a look at the Sonos app reviews on the App Store. The negative 1 star reviews (since May) are overwhelming - and all complaining about the functionality and reliability of the app since the update.  
 

That tells us something. 
 

Which Sonos have acknowledged as they rebuild their new App from the ground up - but for the majority now, I suspect, the App is working to play audio on Sonos products, but don’t expect the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people worldwide, to descend here on the community to announce the fact it’s working for them, as this area is similar to a ‘hospital’ and those that report here are often only those that do have issues …plus it’s clear that a number of those reports are not related to the Sonos App at all, like playlist/audio interruptions, for example. 

Others may have device discovery issues too that are perhaps not App related in some cases. So it’s always worth discussing matters with Sonos Support, not least if there is a Sonos App issue with certain network hardware, the Sonos developers can look to prioritise and maybe address those issues in a future App update.

There are many unknowns from my perspective looking in.

Are there flaws and bugs in the new app, not just missing features, certainly and they need addressing.

How many people out of all Sonos owners are affected? I actually have no idea, only Sonos really know that info as they collect the functional data when people use their systems. Many more than their support team could handle based on the queue wait times. More than an expected spike when an application has a major new release. While there have been increases on forums and online sites, the biggest unknown is the overwhelming silent majority.

Some people will have had issues they’d learnt to live with in the old app, but the new release brought them to their attention again. Especially if it was a missing feature on release so it was further highlighted when the feature returned. It happens all the time with software releases.

Out of the 15M+ Sonos households, the active users on this forum and say Reddit falls short of that number. That isn’t to dismiss number of people having issues or let Sonos off the hook, but I don’t have a handle of how many people are affected.

One area I think may be a potential cause is the previous S2 app had 4 years worth of development and bug fixes in it. Luckily my Sonos ownership was either side of the whole S1/S2 fiasco. If the S2 app was just a continued development of the S1 app, then in reality it contained up to 22 years worth of bug fixing and development and improvements that could handle different environments in the code.

The new app is a ground up rewrite and had a big gap between features, never mind being ready for the brave new world ahead.

An obvious follow up question for me is, did the old codebase contain bug fixes and improvements providing stability on a wide variety of networks and setups from over the years which don’t exist in the new from scratch code base?

From release notes it can be seen there have been bug fixes and improvements for stability. What they actually are only Sonos knows. Maybe they address something that had already be previously addressed in the old app. Maybe it’s a completely new issue. Maybe a bit of both.

For some people they way the use the products or their particular setup gives them no operational issues for the functions that exist. For others the maturity of the old app and its years of fixes may have given them stability which is missing in the new code.

I have no real idea, but it is definitely on Sonos to get the new app back to the level of performance and system stability most users had with the old app.

From a developer/engineer perspective there is a limit to how much information can be collected during normal operation. The ideal time to collect data to try and identify what has gone wrong is when a system is having issues, which is why creating and submitting a diagnostic report is beneficial.

In my experience, while it can help in some situations, the typical IT style turn it off and on again is a temporary mitigation. It gets things working, but doesn’t address the underlying cause which will usually rear its head again later.

I hope Sonos can get things addressed so everyone’s system is back to behaving the way it previously was.