If you have Sonos home audio speakers and devices and are disappointed with the company’s new, updated app, which suffered from massive bugs and performance issues, you won’t be surprised to hear that there’s no immediate fix in sight.
Sonos released a completely updated app in May to coincide with the release of its first headphones, the Sonos Ace. Now, the app seems to be far from finished, as many users have been unable to use many of the features of their speakers, including the ability to play music.
This week, Sonos CEO Patrick Spence took part in a question-and-answer session on social media site Reddit, where he said that while Sonos wanted to re-release the old app to provide users with a temporary solution, that would not happen.
“…I was hoping we could re-release the old app (S2) as an alternative for those of you who are having issues we haven’t yet resolved,” Spence said.
“The trick, of course, is that Sonos isn’t just the mobile app, it’s also software that runs on your speakers and in the cloud. In the months since we launched the new mobile app, we’ve updated the software that runs on our speakers and in the cloud to the point where S2 today is less reliable and less stable than what you remember. After extensive testing, we reluctantly concluded that re-releasing S2 would make the problems worse, not better. I’m sure that’s disappointing. For me, it was disappointing.”
This is not the news Sonos fans wanted to hear. For more than three months, many have been experiencing major problems with their Sonos systems, and fans took to Reddit to take action directly to the CEO.
“When did this window close and why wasn’t the decision to roll back made sooner?” one asked. “You had hopes of releasing S2 but didn’t make it a priority? Burning the boats is not a silver lining, it’s an even bigger failure for which you seem to take no responsibility.”
“This is really hard to believe,” said another. “I’m a software developer with quite a bit of experience in software and hardware development at large companies much larger/broader than Sonos. There is no such thing as ‘we can’t roll back.’ They have the ability to provide an update to the current app.”
Sonos users have reported countless issues on Reddit and the official Sonos forums related to using the new iPhone and Android app. These include music not playing even though it says it will in the app, volume controls not working, pairing speakers in groups not working, and having to reset the Wi-Fi router just to connect to the Sonos system.
Due to the ongoing problems, Sonos’ share price has fallen in recent weeks to nearly half its March peak of nearly $20.
