Sonos reveals new App and Operating System Sonos S2: Making sense of recent announcements

Sonos haven’t been able to take a trick of late, their announcement of a trade-up program was met with concern because it rendered working speakers useless causing unnecessary waste. Then their announcement of backward compatibility of new software updates was met with concern by owners of Sonos systems with older components.

Well, perhaps today’s announcement will make some sense of all that.

In June, Sonos will launch a whole new operating system and app – called Sonos S2.

The S2 Operating system will run on all new hardware announced after May this year, as well as a range of existing Sonos products.

With an all-new app, there will be a new range of software experiences available to Sono users.

Higher resolution audio technology will be possible on the new platform, as well as some new ideas like creating room groups grouping several rooms together, not just several speakers.

If you have a Sonos speaker, here are the ones that will be upgradable to the new Sonos S2.

If you have older speakers, these are the ones that are not S2 compatible:

As was pointed out amid the controversy, these speakers will 100% keep working, as long as you use the S1 Sonos app.

Those old speakers will get security updates and bug fixes, but as this table demonstrates, your S2 users will be bragging about new features that you simply won’t get.

If you only have older gear, you just keep using your current app.

If you’ve got only newish gear, great news, a new app is coming!

If you have a mix, then you have a couple of options:

• Keep using the current app, with security and bug updates, but no new features.
• Separate your system into two, the old and new. This might seem mad, but for many those older speakers might be in a single room or area, so the new ones can operate separately. But you can’t keep older speakers in a system being controlled by the new Sonos S2 app.
• You can remove the older products, leaving you with only newish gear. If you do that, you can trade-up your older gear and get a 30% discount on new speakers.

Importantly, in response to the community outrage, Sonos have declared that speakers that have been traded up, will NO LONGER be deactivated. They can be given to family or friends, or sold on if you like. The only thing you need to know is that serial numbers of those will be tracked, and a second trade-up rebate won’t be possible for the new owners of the speakers.

The new app becomes available in June, and will simply be called “Sonos”