Ideas for next Firmware Update

Here are some ideas which i would like to have enabled on the Sansa Fuze. I think many users would welcome this changes.

  1. With the weel you can only change the sound volume. It would be great if you can make a option like this: weel -> change sound volume or forward/backward in music/video. I mean that you can move the time forward or backward in the music/videso because its a bit anyoing if you have large videos and want to move fast to a specific point. you have to press where long the forward button. to use the weel would be much more better.

  2. Background: Maybe some more colors, but the best idea would be that you can choose an image from your image folder and set this image to your background. like a wallpaper on windows.

  3. Themes: It would be cool if you add the option that you can change the theme of sansa fuze. So you can create a more individual mp3 player. (e.G. different colors or even completly different styles)

  4. Support of .txt Files. So you can read books/texts on the player

  5. games? games like on the ipod. you can sell them in your store.

  6. a software like iTunes. This software inlcudes the firmware updater, video converter, you can buy music through the software and you can manage the folders & files of the player. but this software is not necessary.

  7. I think you never will do this but who knows :wink: Open Source Firmware. This would be awesome for many programmers. There will be many different firmwares for this player with totaly different things. I don’t really know why you shouldn’t do this, because people have still to buy the player if they want to use other firmware. You could be the first one which are offering a player with an open source firmware. People can ‘program’ their own mpw3 player if they want, can add many futers etc. But this is only a proposing & an idea :wink:

I

hHope one of my ideas will be realisied soon :stuck_out_tongue:

Thx for the great Sansa Fuze :wink:

Before adding any bells and whistles, the glaring defect that is the 4120 file limit needs fixing. If they do only that and no more, I’d be very, very happy.

This is great, I thought about starting a thread like this myself earlier today!  Let everyone come up with their wish lists, as well as discuss other’s ideas.

I hate to break your bubble, but I highly doubt we’ll see open-source firmware from Sandisk, for the same way we’ve never seen “open-soure hardware”, DRM fees and licensing.  Due to these features, I doubt they could release the source code if they wanted to.  They wouldn’t want to, of course, as it would allow any competitor to pretty much steal their R&D, and putting together an AS3525 based player would just be a matter of assembling components.  It would be great if we could see some independent development, but you’re just gonna have to wait for Rockbox for any of that.

  1. I agree, the file limit def. needs to be raised to allow us to take full advantage of existing and future microSDHC cards.  This isn’t really a problem for alot of people ATM, and Sandisk is working on this for future updates, which is good.

  2. File Folder Browsing  I have alot of different music from different sources, and its VERY time consuming to attempt to change individual song info on many different songs in order to put it together.  The first time I synched files to the device, I noticed I’d have like 3 different groups for the same artists, b/c of mispellings, guests, and the like.  And I really only want to see albums under the artist if I have the complete album.  Otherwise, I prefer just to see all the songs.  So, imagine my great disappointment when I spent about 2 hours reorganizing and consolidating all my folders manually to make it easier to browse, only to find that this did absolutely nothing on the device.  While I understand the usefulness of the other options, it wouldn’t be so hard to give just one more that would make some people’s experiences ALOT better.

  3. Improved Scrolling System.  I remembered reading something from one of the employees when I was digging through the archives about the possibility of a speed based scrolling system, where the lists move faster when the wheel moves faster, and even the option of ramping up speed after scrolling for awhile, like how the FF and RW buttons work for skipping through songs.  I understand that it would take some experimenting to settle on the right speed for most people (though you could just give them choices), but the addition of wrap-around scrolling shows us that they care about improving the scroll, so hopefully we’ll see this feature soon!

  4. Improve the shuffle logic, or maybe give us some options.  I understand the shuffle is supposed to be random, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen the same song come up within 5 songs of itself, or that I’ll see two or more consecutive songs from the same artist.  I’d love to be able to customize how songs are grouped or what comes up next, or at least allow the random to truly be random.  This is especially true when playing songs through the song list, as the next songs played are all only from the player OR the card, wherever the first song was.  Then, playback isn’t random at all, as I’ll see the same song or artist multiple times in a row…

  5. Let us change the backgrounds.  I do like the convenience of being able to put a few pictures on the unit, I kinda use it like a wallet in that aspect, but it would be really cool if I could set one of those pictures as my background.  I understand that you couldn’t see the background in playback mode, and it could make the icons hard to see (though allowing us to change the colors/sizes of the icons would remedy this), it would still be a nice option, and rather easy to implement.

  6. While I’m on things that are easy to implement, this is just a personal wish of mine.  I like how you can press the center button during a song to view the graphic EQ, next song, or album art, but why does this only stay up for a few seconds?  I like looking at the graphic EQ, and it would be cool to keep that up, or even fill the screen, like you can do on the Clip.  Can ya do this for me, SanDisk?  Please?

  7. Allow the device to take full advantage of its output hardware potential.  I understand that we have true line-out through the 30-pin connector, that some docks take advantage of.  I also understand that there’s an amplified direct speaker output from the AS3525, but of course this would have to be physically assigned to pins on the connector in order for any firmware to unlock it as a feature.  So maybe there’s nothing the FW can do for us, here, but I’m all for anything that allows us to take advantage of the 2 other audio outputs of this chip, as I use my Fuze for alot of things other than just listening w/ my earbuds.

  8. Better video integration.  I have yet to bother putting a single video on my Sansa, as I don’t really need that ability when I’m on the go, and I use my PSP for everything other than music.  It’s much better suited to the task than the Fuze, anyway.  However, I know alot of people DO watch videos, and I would too, if it were easier to put them on there.  I don’t see why we can’t just use regular .avi or .mp4 files, like many other players can.  I hear alot of complaints about the conversion software, so streamlining this process would be awesome!

Extra features like games and stuff are kinda cool, but not nearly as important as the other stuff to me, and would be comparatively more difficult to implement.  I’d like a bit more visual flair and customization, like we just got, and its always welcome for the “cool” factor, but that’s not nearly as important as increased functionality, more intuitive controls, and more options related to the device’s usability.  SanDisk has been great with their updates so far, I just hope they keep it up!

I’ll update this as I think of more stuff, hope they actually read this!

Here’s my wish list:

  1. FM Presets.  The “auto set presets” function is right near the top of the menu and easy to hit accidentally.  I’d like it lower on the menu and have a confirmation prompt about whether to destroy my existing presets.

I’d like to be able to advance to the next preset easily when in FM mode.  Going to the secondary menu and scrolling through the presets is too difficult.  Some simple click or scrollwheel function would be better.  Maybe there is a way to do that and I haven’t found it?  

  1. Positioning in a long file (audiobook or podcast).  While holding the forward or backward key down gives increasingly fast movement through the track, it’s very hard to position to a specific spot, particularly if it is some distance from where you are now.  I think I like the iPod Nano method better (press center button to get a track position display then thumb wheel to move through the track).  Some combination of the thumbwheel approach and the current fast movement approach would be helpful.

  2. With thousands of files, it can be difficult to find what you want in the menus.  I primarily use the Genre menu and it would be easier for me to find things with the Album name or Album-artist only (not track artist) as the next level.

  3. The fast/slow speed feature in audiobooks and podcasts is nearly unusable without automatic pitch adjustment.

@guyscharf wrote:

Here’s my wish list:

 

  1. FM Presets.  The “auto set presets” function is right near the top of the menu and easy to hit accidentally.  I’d like it lower on the menu and have a confirmation prompt about whether to destroy my existing presets.

 

I’d like to be able to advance to the next preset easily when in FM mode.  Going to the secondary menu and scrolling through the presets is too difficult.  Some simple click or scrollwheel function would be better.  Maybe there is a way to do that and I haven’t found it?  

 

There is…press the button in the center of the clickwheel :wink:

Thanks!

Please fix the funny language bug: In German language its not <leeg>  (in english <empty>) its <leer> . The word leeg doesn’t exist. This bug is good known in germany^^

UTF-8 support would be great. I hate to see words with “oe” instead of “œ”. (yes, it’s a french character, just like æ, and it was “forgotten” in ISO-8859-1).

@cruiserdude wrote:

  1. I agree, the file limit def. needs to be raised to allow us to take full advantage of existing and future microSDHC cards.  This isn’t really a problem for alot of people ATM , and Sandisk is working on this for future updates, which is good.

What makes you think that? I don’t think any of us can know how many people consider this a problem, or how many people are put off buying because of it.

As far as I’m concerned, there are only two things that actually detract form the usefulness of the fuze, and everything else should take a backseat.

  1. Audiobook bookmarks.

  2. The Golist. Until it has the ability to add songs to the currently playing list, and have them appear without reloading the list, I’ll never use it. The only thing that nearly convinced me to return my fuze was when I discovered that it lacked this ability.

Ummmm … gapless playback??? I’m assuming this is harder than it looks … but it would be nice.

How about a Play All and/or Shuffle option for the Video side. I have a lot of music videos from youtube on my Fuze.

I said the file limit problem isn’t huge for alot of people AT THE MOMENT, because its not immediate.  Presumably very few people have 16GB cards yet, but I realize it is a problem for them.  I can disregard this as a big issue, however, because SanDisk has already said they are working on this and it WILL be fixed in an upcoming FW update, though probably not the very next one.  So while its an issue, its not one we need to make a big deal about, b/c they’re already gonna fix that.

@cruiserdude wrote:
I said the file limit problem isn’t huge for alot of people AT THE MOMENT, because its not immediate.  Presumably very few people have 16GB cards yet, but I realize it is a problem for them.  I can disregard this as a big issue, however, because SanDisk has already said they are working on this and it WILL be fixed in an upcoming FW update, though probably not the very next one.  So while its an issue, its not one we need to make a big deal about, b/c they’re already gonna fix that.

I’ve got 11.4gb of music on my Fuze, and it’s full…2,345 songs…so it certainly hasn’t been an issue for me. Even with a 16gb card, all the music I own that I actually listen to would fit on it(the card itself), and it would still be less than 3,200 songs. So people must be seriously compressing their music, or have really short songs (and yeah, I really want one of those cards) :smiley:

@marvin_martian wrote:

I’ve got 11.4gb of music on my Fuze, and it’s full…2,345 songs…so it certainly hasn’t been an issue for me. Even with a 16gb card, all the music I own that I actually listen to would fit on it(the card itself), and it would still be less than 3,200 songs. So people must be seriously compressing their music, or have really short songs (and yeah, I really want one of those cards) :smiley:

Depend what you mean by ‘seriously’ compressing. I’ve got 24GB of 160kbs Ogg files awaiting the fix and it’s just over 5600 files. I wouldn’t listen to compressed files at all at home, but find 160kbs perfectly adeqate for music on the move as it hardly represents optimal listening conditions.

I think this all depends on what you use your Fuze for.  I have almost 14GB on my Fuze but only about 1300 “songs.”  That’s most of the space is used by talks and other spoken material like audiobooks and podcasts (and some of what would be called music can be 50 minutes long).  But I can easily imagine that someone with a large collection of shorter works could hit the limit.

Since I listen to a lot of lectures, the following would be useful

  1. Adjustable one touch skip back/forward (I think it was called “study mode” on iRivers).  This is useful when you get distracted and need to repeat a previous point, or to advance past a part you do not need to listen to.

  2. When returning to an audiobook title, the player should remember which audio file you were on last and highlight it in the file list

  3. Ability to go to record mode and then return to the last playing item (good for voice memos, recording lectures, etc)

  4. Manual bookmarking in audiobooks and podcasts, and not just in video

  5. Recording to MP3 format directly would be nice (but there are probably good reasons why this is not in).

  6. An indication on the file lists that a file in an audiobook/podcast/video has a stored position, or has been listened to.

  7. Placement of date and time on recorded files in the file system and not only in the filename.  Failing that, an easier to sort format for the names should be used.

  1. bookmarks for music (like video ones)

  2. sleep timer

  3. an alarm, like set it to come on at a certain time

  4. MORE wallpaper options, more/better colors…or maybe even set a pic as a background (idk if thats possible)

5)games (this is just a WISH), nothing complicated like sims bowling, but just a little solitaire or sudoku or something idk

  1. text viewing, i guess this is a stretch, but like it was cool to view lyrics and listen to a song at the same time on my samsung t9

 and yea

HOPEFULLY, all of this for Christmas

Message Edited by differentchick5 on 11-24-2008 11:44 AM

Ooh, you know what would be really cool?  A configurable alarm setting for those of us who listen to music all night.  I usually turn mine to the lowest volume setting and leave it on all night.  A sleep timer would be useful, though sometimes I like having the music on all night, as it helps my dreams (yeah, I know, a little corny, haha).  Even so, it would be cool if we could set it to come on at a loud volume (or come on at a low volume and progressively increase it until you wake up), whether you were listening at low volume or the unit was off.  I realize that this would be kinda complicated for us to program, but it doesn’t seem like that hard of a feature to implement, and it would be great for people like myself who often listen to music at night, and my headphones sometimes prevent me from hearing my alarm on my phone.