Sonos' latest free update is its most useful yet, especially for iPhone owners

Sonos is experiencing a bit of a tough time at the moment. Much of that is down to various problems with its redesigned app that it unveiled towards the end of May this year, just before its long-awaited Sonos Ace over-ear headphones were announced. 

The app was the company's biggest software redesign in 20 years (yes, Sonos has been around that long), moving everything to a centralised home screen for easier access to various settings and features. Unfortunately, it didn't quite meet the standards of its loyal customers, missing a few essential features that fans loved.

One of the most recent updates to the app, which Sonos has been continually pushing fixes for since its arrival, took a particular toll on some iOS users. The update added a number of features like line-in autoplay and compression settings, as well as setup, configuration and search for the local music library. 

But, it also caused excess battery draining for iPhone and iPad users with some reporting a 50% battery usage of the Sonos app while it ran in the background, as reported by The Verge. That's not ideal of course, especially when the updates are designed to fix problems rather than cause more woe.

Still, it's not all bad news. In fact, there's some good news here too – not least for iPhone and iPad users, as Sonos has pushed another update to fix the battery issue.

The latest update "addresses an issue where the app used excess phone battery" and will also "improve the stability when adding new products", Sonos said in the release notes. 

There should also be more good news for Sonos users before the year is out, after Sonos' CEO Patrick Spence apologised to customers in a letter and detailed the planned improvements the company is set to deliver in October. These include restoring the ability to edit playlists and the upcoming queue in the Sonos app, as well as alarm reliability. 

You'll need to wait a little longer for those features, but for now, if you have been having battery issues on your phone, it's worth installing the latest Sonos update as soon as possible. Open App Store, search for Sonos and tap on it to see the Update button if your iPhone or iPad hasn't done it automatically.