Sansa Fuze 01.01.11 Latest Firmware Download

Not yet…

I wonder if anyone from Sandisk can let us know if this is in the works for a new firmware fix. Seems like I have read about plenty of people to find the slow scrolling to be quite a major flaw w/ this player. It surprises me that this has not been fixed already.

Message Edited by joshtee on 08-31-2008 08:17 PM

Message Edited by joshtee on 09-01-2008 03:23 PM

I see Sandisk is working at a usual glacial pace for the FUZE firmware…

How many more years we gonna wait?

It doesn’t matter how much time it spends in QA!!! It ain’t gonna live up to Sony or Apple firmware standards!!!

Believe me… I wish I was lying!!! 

@bigcraig01 wrote:

I see Sandisk is working at a usual glacial pace for the FUZE firmware…

 

How many more years we gonna wait?

 

It doesn’t matter how much time it spends in QA!!! It ain’t gonna live up to Sony or Apple firmware standards!!!

 

Believe me… I wish I was lying!!! 

LOL. How many versions of firmware have been released?

@bigcraig01 wrote:

I see Sandisk is working at a usual glacial pace for the FUZE firmware…

How many more years we gonna wait?

As Humphrey Bogart said to Peter Lorre in _ The Maltese Falcon _,

“When you’re slapped, you’ll take it and LIKE IT!” :stuck_out_tongue:

In other words, we don’t have much of a say in the matter. However long it takes is how long it’s going to take.

Scrolling is improved in the next firmware.

So is the “MY TOP RATED”  issues…

@bigcraig01 wrote:

I see Sandisk is working at a usual glacial pace for the FUZE firmware…

 

How many more years we gonna wait?

 

It doesn’t matter how much time it spends in QA!!! It ain’t gonna live up to Sony or Apple firmware standards!!!

 

Believe me… I wish I was lying!!! 

Yea - because it’s so hard to meet the “high standards” of no custom equalizer and making the player completely dependent on a crappy bloatware program. And in case you hadn’t noticed Apple and Sony aren’t exactly fast and furious with firmware releases.  

Apple releases firmware fairly often. It is almost always to “support” some new version of iTunes, which usually forced people away from versions that work with DRM-stripping programs. I’ve had an iPod for three years and there wasn’t a single feature added via firmware. I know of only two cases where features were added, in both cases to bring very recently-released models up to par with just-released models. There was a release just a few months after the Classic came out, because it has some serious bugs.

To be fair, though, its extremely rare for companies to release major features like codecs via firmware upgrades. Sansa’s Ogg/Flac support is the only one I can think of. Sometimes its due to technical limitations, I’m sure, but often I expect its just because there is no money to be made in free firmware upgrades.

I also recall a couple of years ago Apple released a firmware ‘upgrade’ that actually took features away. Creative has also done that, their players used to allow FM recording. Not any more.

Another company that tends to add features in firmware upgrades is Insignia (the Best Buy house brand). Their upgrade for the older player after the new one came out added a lot of the features of the newer player to it, but it took an incredibly long time for it to be released. Now that I think about it, maybe they didn’t want to jeopardize sales of the newer player by making the old one capable of the same things, too quickly. But the sound quality is awful.

The Trekstor Vibez has recently gotten some pretty significant user friendly upgrades. Some of those guys were with Rio. Some of the Rio developers released incredible firmware upgrades for the Carbon months after the company went out of business!!!

Also Samsung had published a schedule of feature upgrades for their P2 and has already kept to it through a few firmware releases. I’m not sure if it’s still ongoing. That seems to be a selling point of that player - promised feature upgrades. It’s a bit overpriced though, and no memory slot. 

Sony almost never releases firmware upgrades. Their firmware is stable, but it’s basic - nothing special, and even a little annoying. The selling point of their players is sound quality though. Very hard to beat, but the Fuze comes **bleep** close. 

Message Edited by Riolist on 09-05-2008 09:24 PM

Message Edited by Riolist on 09-05-2008 09:41 PM

Message Edited by Riolist on 09-05-2008 09:42 PM

Personally, The Sansa Fuze is pretty good firmware wise, if you think about it. I have had dozens of mp3’s that froze continually, like the RCA Lyras, and the Coby ■■■■. But the Fuze has not froze on me once.

Except during transfer. My fuze freezes quite alot during huge transfers of over 250mb at one time. The “Writting” circle on the fuze stops moving.

That is the only problem I have had with the firmware. I don’t even know if it is even the firmware.

Cheers, 

Mark

@markjones12345 wrote:

Personally, The Sansa Fuze is pretty good firmware wise, if you think about it. I have had dozens of mp3’s that froze continually, like the RCA Lyras, and the Coby ■■■■. But the Fuze has not froze on me once.

 

Except during transfer. My fuze freezes quite alot during huge transfers of over 250mb at one time. The “Writting” circle on the fuze stops moving.

 

That is the only problem I have had with the firmware. I don’t even know if it is even the firmware.

 

Cheers, 

 

Mark

I haven’t had that problem so it’s probably not firmware. If it was firmware everybody would have it since everybody has the firmware. It could be the computer or the USB cable. My computer is sometimes very fussy about USB, and i’ve also seen a bad USB cable work sometimes and not work other times. Have you tried it on a different computer or a different USB port? Also it’s always better to use the ports on the back of the computer since they’re directly from the motherboard. The front ports are usually off of an internal hub. 

How old is the latest firmware? Here are some things I would like to see in the next firmware.

The autobookmarking is just the place in the file, not the file name. If I want to listen to podcasts for a while, stop to listen to some music, then return to podcasts, I need to remember the name of the podcast I was listening to, and how to find it. it would be nice if there would be a return to podcast function , and a return to audiobook function so that after listening to music or the radio, it resumes in the place of the podcast or audiobook file I was listening to, so I don’t have to remember the name of it, or how to get there. Marking podcasts and audiobooks as read when they are listened to completely would also be nice, and the ability to choose a mode to listen to only unread podcasts or audiobook files, or to listen to all files in that category.

I would also like to see the variable speed playback enhanced. Right now it looks like the fast speed is only around 25% faster and there is no pitch correction. I would like to see it expanded to from half to double normal speed, and have pitch correction. I like listening to lectures on my pc at 1.4-1.7 times normal speed. Windows Media Player corrects for pitch, and allows playing at between half and double normal speed. I would like to be able to do this on my Fuze.

I guess what I really want though is a choice between navigating by folder or by ID3 tags.

I also want a larger font for the elapsed time, time remaining, and clock. With such a large display, there is no reason why these must be so small.  I purposely chose a player with a larger display since I didn’t want the displayed items to be so small. I would also like to see a percentage battery power remaining rather than the battery icon.

The blue light around the scroll wheel becomes annoying after a while. It also decreases battery life. Imo there should be a setting to disable it.

When deleting files on the player, it is very easy to delete the wrong file. I would like to see the file title on the confirmation screen(delete file yes or no?) so that you are sure that you are deleting the file you want to delete. I almost deleted the wrong file a few times.

I would like to see the back button become useful a larger percentage of the time. Often when I press it, nothing happens.

I would like to see an icon on the screen indicating that the equalizer is or is not set to normal.

I would like to see the battery icon on the screen replaced with a number indicating percentage of battery life remaining.

When an artist is chosen, the player should give a choice of seeing a song list or an album list, and of toggling easily between the two.

Message Edited by JK98 on 09-21-2008 10:28 PM

Message Edited by JK98 on 09-23-2008 01:08 AM

I am really impressed with the Fuze and see it as a solution for me for a long time.  It is a great player with all the basic features I look for, at a great price, and with great sound, which is a lot more than I can say for the i.things. 

However, there is always a wish list, so here is mine (for the next firmware version?):

  1. There appears to be a song limit in the 4000 range which needs to be corrected to fully use the microSDHC capability.
  2. I would prefer a simple directory structure as an option.  This might be provided by Rockbox, but why not just provide it?
  3. I have put together playlists with no problem, but if there is a 50 song limit, this could be increased.  Also, playlists spanning the Fuze and microSd would be great.
  4. Regarding the scrolling through endless artist names, a simple alphanumeric index could be used as the kickoff via menu selection and probably the center button.  Fast scolling may be just a blur, but I am sure there are great suggestions regarding this out there.
  5. I know that this is a hardware issue, but a line out equivalent function via the headphone jack or base connector would be of great use…firmware selectable.
  6. When using the radio preselects, an index screen selection would be useful to move to the station of choice rather then clicking through the list.
  7. The clock display is just that, even though the date is entered as well.  Why not display the date and time as an option?
  8. The equalizer is great but two additonal functions would be very nice; baseboost or similar, an automatic gain leveler. 
  9. When viewing the song or album screens, I do not wish to see a tiny jpeg…it takes up valuable space and slows down the update.  I would prefer that this could be disabled by an option selection and allow better use of the display for song and album info…perhaps the scrolling text could be avoided in many cases.
  10. To be able to use picture/jpeg as a background would be nice.
  11. When playing videos, while I like the bookmark feature, it would be nice to be able to fast forward manually either by displaying an accelerated video or simply by time.
  12. I would like to be able to choose from a selection of text font and size if smaller characters are legible.  Perhaps this could be an option.
  13. I would also appreciate an address book option.  I don’t want to edit, just access a computer generated address book.
  14. I do not see any difference between normal and high volume and would appreciate some explanation.

As you may appreciate, I am looking for basic audio and display functionality which the Fuze provides very well with no glitches for me to date…these items are mainly just gravy. 

  Wow…

And THAT’S just his ‘short’ list! :smileyvery-happy:

 Yeah,and maybe in the next firmware update the Fuze could do something about these gas prices. 

@shmince wrote:
 Yeah,and maybe in the next firmware update the Fuze could do something about these gas prices. 

See, if you had read the manual you could have saved a lot of money: Settings>Economy>Gas Prices.

Oh, and whoever’s the guy messing with the stock market setting, very funny, now knock it off!

Message Edited by Riolist on 09-17-2008 11:07 PM

Hello, the 2 main problems I am facing with my 8GB Fuze which I hope to be resolved in the next update:

One is the unavailability of a sleep timer.  You might suggest creating playlists or listening to albums and then relying on the auto-shutdown but it really is troublesome and restrictive of what you can listen. Unless of course there is an smart/auto playlist function. The clip has sleep timer, why not the fuze?

The next problem I have is the searching of tracks. Many other makes of mp3 players have search functions are able to search songs by artist and title which beats scrolling a whole list of artists from A-Z. Also I think we should be to reverse scroll from A directly to Z and not going through B,C,D…X, Y to Z. If you get what I mean.

Thanks.

Message Edited by quixotius on 09-20-2008 02:03 AM

Message Edited by quixotius on 09-20-2008 02:03 AM

I purchased my Fuze earlier this week, and so far, I’m pretty satisfied with it.  However, there is one small thing that irks me: the lack of gapless playback.  Is there any chance that this feature will be added in the next firmware update (if/when it comes out)?