At this point, complaining about Sonos’s app is more of a futile exercise than anything else. The damage from the app’s spring overhaul is done, even though the company continues to slowly push out improvements and fixes. However, these incremental changes haven’t addressed the fundamental issue – the official Sonos app often fails to function properly. This is where third-party solutions like SonoPhone come into play.
SonoPhone, available for iOS, stands out as a leading contender. Priced at a reasonable $3, a one-time purchase, it provides a refreshing alternative in a world saturated with subscriptions. The app’s versatility extends to both current S2 devices and legacy S1 hardware, offering compatibility across the board. SonoPhone promises a simplified user experience, requiring fewer taps to perform basic functions. While I haven’t meticulously counted the taps, the app’s intuitiveness makes it feel significantly more streamlined.
The user interface, while different from the official Sonos app, is easy to adapt to. Speakers are readily accessible from the top, and grouping them into zones is a breeze. Simply drag one speaker onto another to create a zone and drag it off to break it up. Notably, my “pool” speaker, actually a stereo pair of old Play:1s, is properly displayed as a single speaker. All the usual music options are readily available – playlists, favorites, Sonos radio, and even music stored on your NAS. Managing multiple users on a single service is effortless, allowing you to easily switch between accounts.
While SonoPhone isn’t a highly sophisticated app, particularly in terms of its UI (it has a somewhat dated look), it offers a significant improvement over the official app. Access to deeper Sonos settings and adding new speakers remains limited, requiring you to keep the official app handy. However, SonoPhone’s user-friendliness means you’ll rarely need to suffer through the official app on a daily basis.
