Sonos announces new operating system
Sonos will introduce a new app and operating system in June. This will increase the audio bandwidth and put more focus on personalization and user-friendliness. The manufacturer also announces the possibilities for older Sonos products.
The new operating system is called Sonos S2. In app stores, it will inherit the name Sonos Controller from the old app, which will go through life as the Sonos S1 Controller from June 2020. Users of the current app will be notified that they can download the new app if it is available. Sonos is not yet revealing much about the new software, but says it is aiming for more personalization and ease of use. Also, a higher audio bandwidth would allow playback of higher resolution audio files. A new feature that will be available from June is room groups. This means that speakers that are regularly grouped are remembered and marked as a zone.
Legacy products are not supported in the new operating system, according to Sonos due to processor and memory limitations. Users with these products in their Sonos network can continue to use the current app, but will no longer receive any new features. It is also possible to place the old products with possibly a number of new ones in a separate Sonos network, which runs on S1. However, the newer products in the network will no longer receive new functions and devices from one Sonos network can no longer be grouped with products from another.
Sonos announced in January that the original Zone Players, the Connect and Connect:Amp, the first-generation Play:5, the CR200 and the Bridge will no longer receive new functionality, only bug fixes and security patches. These older devices would still be usable after May 2020, but if other Sonos products are also in the network, they will no longer receive upgrades. Another option was to opt for the controversial recycling program. Old Sonos products could be deactivated in exchange for a thirty percent discount on new products. After much criticism, Sonos has stopped using Recycle Mode and old devices are no longer disabled. The discontinuation of support for the legacy products now appears to be related to the arrival of the new operating system and the new app.
It is also still possible to exchange old products for a thirty percent discount on new ones. Sonos also says that it sometimes pays to test whether old products add something to the network. The Bridge and CR200 are examples of this according to the manufacturer. Sonos products released after April 2020 will not be supported in the S1 operating system and thus will not work with legacy products on a single network.