Sonos says it’s fixed excessive battery drain on the iPhone

By Phil Nickinson Published July 31, 2024

It’s been about a week since Sonos CEO Patrick Spence apologized for the months-long issues with the Sonos platform and recommitted to biweekly app updates to try to work things out. And today we’ve received an interim app update that the company says should address “an issue where the app used excess phone battery on iOS.”

The update — which is available now — also claims to “improve the stability when adding new products,” according to the changelog. In addition to the update for the Sonos app itself, it’s also worth digging into the app settings and checking to see if there’s an update to your speaker system, too.

The Sonos app saga has been going on since mid-May 2024, when the app received a major overhaul ahead of the release of the Sonos Ace headphones. While it’s not uncommon for users to be skittish when it comes to changes to the way an app looks and feels, there were obvious problems from the get-go. Some features had been removed on purpose, with plans for them to return in future updates. But other things were just obviously broken.

Sonos, for its part, has at least been fairly visible in the Sonos subreddit, listing known bugs and broad update schedules. That’s better than nothing, and it showed the company was aware of the problem,and working on things. However, it still took more than two months for company leadership to publicly address the issues, which Spence did on July 25, writing that “fixing the app for all of our customers and partners has been and continues to be our number one priority.”

One more little nugget from KeithFromSonos in the Sonos subreddit: The company is still targeting late-summer or fall for an update that will allow the Sonos Ace headphones to work directly with the Beam soundbar. Currently, the Audio Swap feature only works with the Sonos Arc soundbar.