If you have invested in the excellent but expensive home audio equipment sold by Sonos then you may have recently been frustrated that your pricey collection of speakers has become a lot more difficult to use.
Sonos completely updated its smartphone and tablet app for iPhone and Android in May to coincide with the launch of its Sonos Ace headphones, but in the process broke an alarming amount of functionality in the app, leaving customers unable to use their speakers as normal, even to the point of not being able to play music in some situations.
It got so bad that Sonos CEO Patrick Spence issued an apology in July, but not all the bugs are fixed yet.
When the new app was released for iOS and Android, Sonos removed the older controller app, known as S2, from app stores. An app is necessary for most Sonos systems to control music, create groupings of multiple speakers and update product software, among other things. But the new app has dire customer ratings and created a PR crisis for Sonos when it seemed the company had jumped the gun and released the app far before it was ready for public use.
The Verge is now reporting that Sonos is considering bringing back the S2 app in unprecedented emergency measures to try and get its loyal customers back on side.
“[T]here have been discussions high up within Sonos about bringing back the prior version of the app, known as S2, as the company continues toiling away at improving the performance and addressing bugs with the overhauled design that rolled out in May to a flood of negative feedback,” said Verge reporter Chris Welch.
“Letting customers fall back to the older software could ease their frustrations and reduce at least some of the pressure on Sonos to rectify every issue with the new app.”
It’s understood that Sonos wanted to push the updated app out at the same time as its Arc headphones, but that audio product only communicates with Sonos soundbars. What has transpired is a litany of bugs and app crash issues that have infuriated loyal Sonos customers who have spent hundreds, if not thousands, on kitting their homes out with audio equipment that is now not fully functional.
Some people may only have one or two Sonos speakers but the appeal of buying the expensive hardware has been because you can link them all together over your home Wi-Fi network to create a house-wide web of speakers. This has meant that some people have spent large sums to kit their whole house, garage and garden out with tech that has now been rendered unusable thanks to a dodgy software update.
The crisis has seen Sonos’s share price dip considerably since the trouble began in May.
