Retired Sonos Staff

End of Software Support - Clarifications

Dec 8, 2022 11:29 AM UTC
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We announced yesterday that some of our oldest Sonos products will be moving into a legacy mode in May of 2020. Our commitment is to support products with regular software updates for a minimum of five years after we stop selling them, and we have a track record of supporting products far longer.

Here is some public information we’ve shared, gathered into one place to respond to some of your questions in one easy thread, so that people can find the correct information easily.

Beginning in May, software updates and new features from Sonos will only be delivered to systems with only modern products.

After May, systems that include legacy products will continue to work as before - but they will no longer receive software updates or new features.

Sonos will work to maintain the existing experience and conduct bug fixes, but our efforts will ultimately be limited by the lack of memory and processing power of these legacy products.

We don’t expect any immediate impact to your experience, but access to services and overall functionality will eventually be disrupted, particularly as partners evolve their own services and features.

Customers with both legacy and modern products have time to decide what option is best for them. You can continue to use your whole system in legacy mode - in this case, it will stop receiving updates and new features.

You will also be able to separate your legacy products from your modern products, so that the modern products can still receive updates and new features, and legacy products can still be used separately. We’ll have more information on how to do this in May when you can take that action.

Another option available to all customers with legacy products is to take advantage of the Trade Up program, which allows you to upgrade older Sonos products to modern ones with a 30% discount. Trade Up will be open to customers at any time should they decide to upgrade.

We recognize this is new for Sonos owners, just as it is for Sonos. We are committed to help you by making options available to you to support the best decision for your home.

If you have any further questions, please don’t hesitate with asking.

Update 2/22: A message from our CEO

We heard you. We did not get this right from the start. My apologies for that and I wanted to personally assure you of the path forward:

First, rest assured that come May, when we end new software updates for our legacy products, they will continue to work as they do today. We are not bricking them, we are not forcing them into obsolescence, and we are not taking anything away. Many of you have invested heavily in your Sonos systems, and we intend to honor that investment for as long as possible. While legacy Sonos products won’t get new software features, we pledge to keep them updated with bug fixes and security patches for as long as possible. If we run into something core to the experience that can’t be addressed, we’ll work to offer an alternative solution and let you know about any changes you’ll see in your experience.

Secondly, we heard you on the issue of legacy products and modern products not being able to coexist in your home. We are working on a way to split your system so that modern products work together and get the latest features, while legacy products work together and remain in their current state. We’re finalizing details on this plan and will share more in the coming weeks.

While we have a lot of great products and features in the pipeline, we want our customers to upgrade to our latest and greatest products when they’re excited by what the new products offer, not because they feel forced to do so. That’s the intent of the trade up program we launched for our loyal customers.

Thank you for being a Sonos customer. Thank you for taking the time to give us your feedback. I hope that you’ll forgive our misstep, and let us earn back your trust. Without you, Sonos wouldn’t exist and we’ll work harder than ever to earn your loyalty every single day.

If you have any further questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Patrick Spence
CEO, Sonos

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Daniel88

Avid Contributor I

Memory is cheap now compared with 2009. The impact of overloading on cost is much less significant now.

It’s a fair point. though, that developments always, inevitably, overtake memory that seems more than adequate now. So it’s a judgement call, as none of us knows. My judgement is that the Play:5 gen 2 will be good for another 10 years plus, and I will act accordingly. You may make a different call and act differently. Fine.

Incidentally, I love the way you switch your arguments just to score points. Accusing Sonos of putting too much memory in! Hilarious. Thanks for the entertainment.

I did not change my argument, i just say that if Daniel says that they will NEVER use up 256 Mbyte and that this amount is enough forever, it seems stupid of them to put in more memory and storage. Even though prices on memory and flash has gone down, there is a price difference between a 256 Mbyte and a 1 Gbyte flash chip and if they did not think that it was ever needed, they could have saved some money.

Maybe it is only ½ dollar cheaper, but ½ dollar times 100.000 sold devices, would still make 50.000 dollars just for one component.

The reason they have put in 1 Gbyte is because they believe that within the lifespan of these devices, they will need about that much ram/rom and that means that inside those products lifecycle, the Play 5 2.gen will be not be around for as long and this device is being sold today, alongside those other products with 4 times ram and rom.

Rumours have it, that the Play 5 will have a “gen 3” iteration, released soon, and if this is true, then you can expect that the Play 5. 2.gen will be phased out “due to low ram/rom” in 5 years time.

So you mean they could support the 32mb for 10 years but the 256mb only for around 10 years as well? The backlash sonos just got from all over the world is massive, they will do whatever they can to prevent that from happening again, the gen2 is here to stay, they should be able to update that speaker far longer than the gen1, this is just my 1 cents.

Moderator Note: Removed Profanity.

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Daniel88

Avid Contributor I

Sorry I don’t get what you are talking about. The Sub is running the very same firmware build as all the other Sonos products do. You are purposely confusing facts.

Sonos has said that they need to make the Play 5 and a few other units legacy because the firmware HAS to be the same on every single sonos unit in your system, otherwise they will not “communicate”.

The reason they legacy these products is that the firmware can not be held within 32Mbyte anymore.

So when they reach the 64 Mbyte limit, they will have to legacy all 64 Mbyte products as well.

Considering that Sonos have managed to support up to 15 year old gear until today, they will probably manage to support devices with twice the RAM/ROM of the now legacy gear for at least 8 years from present. A lot can happen in 8 years, the Sub (or any other Sonos product for that matter) may become defective and has to be replaced with a hypothetical 2nd gen Sub anyway for instance. There’s no point in driving yourself mad about anything that may or may not arise in a few years time.

Agree to 100%, i think that sonos Will find a way to keep your speakers running for a long time after they stop selling them

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

@DK_Madsen Sonos say that unless units are on the same firmware version, they cannot communicate or do multi room. Which is why your idea doesn't work.

Why Sonos says this is not something I can challenge, not knowing what's under the hood of their system. Or, even if I knew it, not being able to understand it!

Yes same firmware revision on all units, but even though they have the same firmware i guarantee you that they have the firmware in “boxes”.

One part of the firmware handles wifi, one handles audio playback, one handles decoding of streaming and so on.

The “Every unit has to be on the same level” is just something they have decided, there is no law of physics that say that it HAS to be like that.

I bet that the part of the firmware that handles Play 5 specific tasks have not been altered for ages, so all they needed to do was to split the firmware up into 2 branches

Full firmware for modern units
Light firmware for legacy units

This way they could cut out every part of the firmware that the legacy units never use (Alexa, Airplay 2, etc) and release the light firmware.

Every time they released a new firmware, they could just update the firmware revision on the light firmware to match the full firmware, and in the case they changed parts of the full firmware, that was also present in the light firmware, they would update that part in the light as well.

If the firmware is written well, then the boxes i talk about is like “drivers”. One driver for the wireless module, one for the amplifier, one for decoding audio streams and so on. They only add the drivers needed for the legacy products and leave everything else out of it.

This is how smart phone firmware is written, this way you dont need to change more than you have to and since everything is drivers, that connect to the “operating system“ you know that the parts you did not change, will work.

Or to put it another way….If the sonos firmware is written in such a way that they can not do this, it’s really poorly written.

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G

Goodbye Sonos

Enthusiast II

@DK_Madsen Sonos say that unless units are on the same firmware version, they cannot communicate or do multi room. Which is why your idea doesn't work.

Why Sonos says this is not something I can challenge, not knowing what's under the hood of their system. Or, even if I knew it, not being able to understand it!

Yes same firmware revision on all units, but even though they have the same firmware i guarantee you that they have the firmware in “boxes”.

One part of the firmware handles wifi, one handles audio playback, one handles decoding of streaming and so on.

The “Every unit has to be on the same level” is just something they have decided, there is no law of physics that say that it HAS to be like that.

I bet that the part of the firmware that handles Play 5 specific tasks have not been altered for ages, so all they needed to do was to split the firmware up into 2 branches

Full firmware for modern units
Light firmware for legacy units

This way they could cut out every part of the firmware that the legacy units never use (Alexa, Airplay 2, etc) and release the light firmware.

Every time they released a new firmware, they could just update the firmware revision on the light firmware to match the full firmware, and in the case they changed parts of the full firmware, that was also present in the light firmware, they would update that part in the light as well.

If the firmware is written well, then the boxes i talk about is like “drivers”. One driver for the wireless module, one for the amplifier, one for decoding audio streams and so on. They only add the drivers needed for the legacy products and leave everything else out of it.

This is how smart phone firmware is written, this way you dont need to change more than you have to and since everything is drivers, that connect to the “operating system“ you know that the parts you did not change, will work.

Or to put it another way….If the sonos firmware is written in such a way that they can not do this, it’s really poorly written.

You are of course absolutely correct in what you say, but you are also wasting your time arguing your valid point with these people. It doesn’t matter what you say; no matter how true and correct it is they will never accept that Sonos is anything but wonderful in all their design and product and marketing decsions.

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DK_Madsen

Enthusiast II

You are of course absolutely correct in what you say, but you are also wasting your time arguing your valid point with these people. It doesn’t matter what you say; no matter how true and correct it is they will never accept that Sonos is anything but wonderful in all their design and product and marketing decsions.

No it seems that all the critics with valid points have vanished and only the core “religious follower” group is left.

None of these people are willing to challenge anything Sonos says, in the same way that a true religious believer does not want to challenge, if what their god has said is true. :)

Today Sonos stock dipped below 10USD, and with all the talk of corona and recession i would be really worried if i was sonos.

A new recession where people looses their jobs, and the first thing people will cut down on is “luxury” and atleast price wise sonos is a luxury brand.

I wonder if Sonos will survive, first the backlash of their poor decisions and now a possible recession. One thing is for sure, the backlash at their “retirement of older products” scheme, have not helped them one bit.

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melvimbe

Yes same firmware revision on all units, but even though they have the same firmware i guarantee you that they have the firmware in “boxes”.

One part of the firmware handles wifi, one handles audio playback, one handles decoding of streaming and so on.

The “Every unit has to be on the same level” is just something they have decided, there is no law of physics that say that it HAS to be like that.

I bet that the part of the firmware that handles Play 5 specific tasks have not been altered for ages, so all they needed to do was to split the firmware up into 2 branches

Full firmware for modern units
Light firmware for legacy units

This way they could cut out every part of the firmware that the legacy units never use (Alexa, Airplay 2, etc) and release the light firmware.

I don’t think it’s quite that simple. Each product probably has different ‘boxes’ in it, depending on it’s specific features, not just the two groups you listed. However, the box for certain features like WiFi need to be the same, so I agree with the point in general.

Every time they released a new firmware, they could just update the firmware revision on the light firmware to match the full firmware, and in the case they changed parts of the full firmware, that was also present in the light firmware, they would update that part in the light as well.

If the firmware is written well, then the boxes i talk about is like “drivers”. One driver for the wireless module, one for the amplifier, one for decoding audio streams and so on. They only add the drivers needed for the legacy products and leave everything else out of it.

I believe this is already what’s happening. I think you’re reading too much into the ““Every unit has to be on the same level” to mean every single piece of code rather than the ‘boxes’ that need to be the same/common on every device.

If the above is true, that would mean that a change in the ‘alexa box’ would not add any code to the legacy devices, since they don’t have built in voice control. A change to the WiFi driver, would effect the legacy devices. If the upgraded WiFi driver doesn’t fit on the legacy devices, than it could be applied to any devices in your system.

Perhaps put a different way one way to look at it is….

Sonos devices must be on same firmware

Some Sonos devices have voice control capabilities.

Therefore every Sonos has voice control firmware.

Therefore Sonos could make more space on legacy devices by removing voice control firmware where it isn’t used.

I don’t think the above is true. I think it’s more like...

Sonos devices must be on the same firmware for the features the device supports

All Sonos devices have WiFi capabilities.

Therefore every Sonos device must be on the same WiFi firmware.

Therefore Sonos cannot update the WiFi firmware on any Sonos device if there is not available space on every Sonos device.

The difference has to do with initial premise of the argument. One premise is a literal interpretation of what Sonos said, the other a looser interpretation that makes more sense with the decision Sonos has made and seems to fit with the programming framework you believe it should be written as.

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Danny

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Daniel88

Avid Contributor I

Memory is cheap now compared with 2009. The impact of overloading on cost is much less significant now.

It’s a fair point. though, that developments always, inevitably, overtake memory that seems more than adequate now. So it’s a judgement call, as none of us knows. My judgement is that the Play:5 gen 2 will be good for another 10 years plus, and I will act accordingly. You may make a different call and act differently. Fine.

Incidentally, I love the way you switch your arguments just to score points. Accusing Sonos of putting too much memory in! Hilarious. Thanks for the entertainment.

I did not change my argument, i just say that if Daniel says that they will NEVER use up 256 Mbyte and that this amount is enough forever, it seems stupid of them to put in more memory and storage. Even though prices on memory and flash has gone down, there is a price difference between a 256 Mbyte and a 1 Gbyte flash chip and if they did not think that it was ever needed, they could have saved some money.

Maybe it is only ½ dollar cheaper, but ½ dollar times 100.000 sold devices, would still make 50.000 dollars just for one component.

The reason they have put in 1 Gbyte is because they believe that within the lifespan of these devices, they will need about that much ram/rom and that means that inside those products lifecycle, the Play 5 2.gen will be not be around for as long and this device is being sold today, alongside those other products with 4 times ram and rom.

Rumours have it, that the Play 5 will have a “gen 3” iteration, released soon, and if this is true, then you can expect that the Play 5. 2.gen will be phased out “due to low ram/rom” in 5 years time.

So just because they release a gen3 they Will stop updating a product that works just fine with 256mb ? You must be really scared and sad when sonos releases new hardware thinking you wont be able to use your perfectly fine and working speakers just cus a new one comes out

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melvimbe

You are of course absolutely correct in what you say, but you are also wasting your time arguing your valid point with these people. It doesn’t matter what you say; no matter how true and correct it is they will never accept that Sonos is anything but wonderful in all their design and product and marketing decsions.

I see no problem with the arguments made, other than I don’t agree with the initial premise the argument is based on. I understand the basis for the premise, but don’t interpret it the same way.

I also don’t think it’s very accurate to say that those who disagree with your conclusion think Sonos could do no wrong. I haven’t seen anyone say that Sonos marketed this correctly, or that Sonos products are without flaw. As these things tend to go, points of agreement aren’t highlighted while points of disagreement get all the attention.

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Danny

Ken_Griffiths

So just because they release a gen3 they Will stop updating a product that works just fine with 256mb ? You must be really scared and sad when sonos releases new hardware thinking you wont be able to use your perfectly fine and working speakers just cus a new one comes out

Only the legacy devices mentioned in the Sonos announcements will not get any updates… even if the Play:5 (gen2) speaker stopped being manufactured/sold today… the minimum time in which it would not become supported and receive updates is 5 years from now … In practice however, it’s more likely to be closer to double that period, or longer, but I’m basing that on Sonos’ past record for product support.

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D

Daniel88

Avid Contributor I

So just because they release a gen3 they Will stop updating a product that works just fine with 256mb ? You must be really scared and sad when sonos releases new hardware thinking you wont be able to use your perfectly fine and working speakers just cus a new one comes out

No .. you misunderstand, only the legacy devices mentioned in the Sonos announcements will not get any updates… even if the Play:5 (gen2) speaker stopped being manufactured/sold today… the minimum time in which it would not become supported and receive updates is 5 years from now … In practice however, it’s more likely to be closer to double that period, or longer, but I’m basing that on Sonos’ past record for product support.

Yes hopefully 10 years after they stop selling it, maybe its just me but i have accepted that i have to buy new speakers maybe 7 years from now, but how is it different to anything else i buy? I buy a new smartphone every 3 year for the same amount that 2 play 5 costs, do feel bad for the people who are heavily invested in sonos, but i however have made peace with it

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