Why can't Sonos Roam work for phone calls? I want an answer.

It’s not advertised by Sonos as a telephone speaker, it’s perhaps better described as a wireless-multiroom audio speaker with  Bluetooth and Airplay built-in, whose microphones are used to auto-TruePlay and tune it’s audio-output to its surrounding environment. The mics allow the user to converse with the built in voice assistants for playback/control of the audio and adjust its volume.

The Bluetooth built-in, in some respects is unlike any other, in that it acts as a line-in/pass-through for the Bluetooth-playing audio, which in turn allows the Roam to be ‘grouped’ over WiFi with other Sonos speakers (with or without Bluetooth) to playback that streaming audio to multiple rooms. 

The little speaker has these listed features (not an exhaustive list):

• Waterproof 
• Auto-Trueplay 
• Apple Airplay 
• Wireless Audio
• Sound Swap Audio Transfer to compatible Sonos products
• Bluetooth (with pass-through/line-in to Sonos wireless connected devices)
• Stereo pairing & grouping.
• 10 hour+ battery life
• Built-in mic with voice assistant (Alexa/Google?)
• Available in Black/White colours
• Wired/Wireless charging

…but a mobile telephone speaker, it isn’t (not yet at least), nor as it ever been advertised as such.

If something is listed as “bluetooth” and “built-in mic”, then in my opinion it needs to explicitly be listed as not allowing for phone calls. Because I’m willing to bet 100% of other portable speakers with “bluetooth” and “built-in mic” support phone calls. It’s like a car that has an accelerator pedal and a “Drive” mode but doesn’t support actually moving forward.

@twinsdad 

Not to be rude … (and @Ken_Griffiths did an excellent job  to address your RANT) but no where on the Sonos website does it say the Roam can be used for phone calls. Duh??

I would suggest you do better research before you buy a product. Maybe you should have hoped the thread would be closed for comment. Had it been…my (this) post exposing your lack of common sense when buying a product would have never seen the light of day. 

Here's the product I bought the Roam to replace. To see phone support you need to expand on the second to last bullet point on the very bottom of the product page. So because I didn't happen to notice that one point is not made on the second to last bullet point expansion, when every other product in the category supports this, that's my lack of research? Is this a site of Sonos fanboys?

https://www.ultimateears.com/en-us/wireless-speakers/boom-2.html

Not of fanboys, but of people capable of looking at the specs of a device before purchasing it, yes. 

The devil is sometimes in the detail I guess and it’s what a device will actually do - not what you think it will do. Sonos has never said the Roam will work as a speaker for phone calls over Bluetooth - the mic, as I’ve attempted to explain, is used to speak to the built in voice assistant and for continuous auto-TruePlay tuning of the speaker, as you move it about to different listening environments.

What you perhaps need to do is contact Sonos Customer Support and submit your requirements as a ‘new feature request’, then see if the Sonos developers can perhaps go onto include that in a software update at some point in the future. Here is the link if you wish to chat/speak to Sonos Support:

https://support.sonos.com/s/contact

Hope that helps…

By the way, my car has ‘wings’, but it doesn’t fly (joke) … ha ha

@twinsdad

Look…man-up, woman-up or whatever sexual orientation you identify with and STOP blaming others for your mistakes. Take responsibility for your actions. Learn from your mistakes and hopefully you won’t make the same mistake again. Your rational to justify your actions is that of a two year old and not that of a responsible intelligent person (or adult if you’re of age). So you have two choices:

1. Keep the speaker
2. Return it and buy what you want

Your complaining about your mistaken buying decision is fruitless. Take @Ken_Griffiths advice and submit a request for a feature enhancement. That’s all that can be done. 

Now that said…Do you have a technical issue this community can address? If not…well…you know the answer.

Not to be rude, but I am 100% am glad it is NOT a Bluetooth speaker. I had one and it’s annoying as all get up. 

Phone use? For me it was implicit and I was surprised that it does not feature this.  But hey, it's a great unit as designed. There are other ways to manage phone calls.  Stop beating each other up, it's not that big a deal.

I can understand the assumption, but when a speaker that has bluetooth does a lot of other things that a typical bluetooth speaker doesn’t do, it’s reasonable that it may not do all that you assume it would.  Does Sonos have a responsibility to highlight all the features a product doesn’t  in can you make an assumption?  No.  I personally think Sonos should added to their FAQ, along with other assumptions they dispel in the FAQ though.   And you can always return the product if it’s not what you want.

All that said, you could have easily asked the question without making demand.  No body really wants to deal with people who start off making demands.   I am not sure what the consequences of not meeting your demands are anyway.