Sansa Fuze+ Firmware 02.38.06

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Firmware is the software code that powers your Fuze+.  You can think of it as the operating system.  SanDisk actively and periodically updates the capabilities, functionality, and reliability of the Firmware.  For an optimal experience with your Fuze+, SanDisk recommends that you update your Firmware with each new release.  It’s fast, easy, and free!

SanDisk has just released  firmware version 02.38.06 for the Sansa Fuze+. Download links and the release notes are available below.

Windows Users can Connect the device in any Mode and follow the instructions below.

Mac and Linux users can connect their Fuze in MSC or Auto Detect mode and follow the instructions below. 

MSC mode instructions:

  • Turn on the Fuze+
  • Navigate to  Settings  on the menu of the device itself 
  • Scroll down to and select  USB Mode
  • Select  MSC

 Sansa Fuze+ Firmware 02.38.06 Download and Installation instructions

 

Manual Firmware Update  (Download and Instructions)

Manual Firmware Update (All Regions) - Click here to download

All languages are now in one firmware version. After firmware update you will need to select your Language and Region preference.

• Remove any external card from the Fuze+ before performing firmware update

• Ensure your battery is > 50% full. 

• Plug in your Sansa Fuze+ to your computer. 

• Extract the  firmware.sb  file from the .zip file you just downloaded into a folder on your computer.

• Once extracted, drag the file to the root directory of your Sansa Fuze+. 

• Disconnect the Sansa Fuze+ and let the firmware update begin. 

• Once it finally finishes doing its update, it will turn itself off. 

• Turn the Fuze+ on, Select your language and region preference 

• Once its back to the main menu, head to “Settings” >  “Info”, and verify the “Version” is now 02.38.06"x".

  Sansa Fuze+ Firmware 02.38.06 Release Notes

This new firmware has various bug fixes, including key fixes listed below, as well as enhancements. Upon completion of the firmware upgrade, the device will turn off; power on the device to complete the upgrade process.  If the device does not initiate or complete, press & hold the Power switch for 15 seconds to reset the device and then press and hold power button again to restart. 

Enhancements

Music content browsing by folder

Menu looping feature added

Audiobook sort order improvement

Low battery state early warning message added

Content library handling improvement

  

Bugs Fixed

Device didn’t resume correctly for slotRadio card and audiobook playback

Some microSD cards were not recognized 

Certain FLAC and OGG files could not play

Known Issues

Playlist doesn’t resume correctly

After firmware downgrade/upgrade, contents from internal memory is showing under card or contents under card are no longer showing up (Work around: remove and reinsert card)

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  • Folder Browsing
  • Menu Wrap-Around (looping)
  • Audiobook Sorting Fix
  • Memory card recognition fixed
  • FLAC file playing fixed

WOW! This ought to make a lot of people happy!

Or at least not so grumpy. :stuck_out_tongue:

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So is the noticeable lag in the menus fixed now? It doesn’t appear in the “Known Issues” any more.

I might consider buying one again if that’s the case. I’m still glad I made the switch to the white Clip+ though, plenty more versatile!

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Yes, the lag is gone (at least on mine), I would guess that “Content library handling improvement” alluded to that.

What directory does the “Music Content Browsing by Folder” feature expect to see the music? Mine is in a subfolder configuration (e.g., Music\<Band Name>\<Album Name>\<songs>) on both my internal memory and my external microSD and both are listed as <<Empty>> :cry:

EDIT: After deleting the *.idx files, the folder browsing was working just fine. Yay for some great updates! Now if you could only fix the playlist subfolder issue resolved, I would be an even happier camper.

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I was just checking rockbox status over at http://forums.rockbox.org/index.php/topic,26284.0.html and figured that I might as well stop here.  This is an amazing release list… it could well make this device usable for a large collection (16+32) for the first time!  

Edit:

Thank you for this release. It is rough & quirky, but functional… exactly what I expected 10 months ago in September 2010 when I bought your 16 GB Fuze+ with a 32 GB Sansa microSD for $213 the day that it was shipped. You can now legitimately sell a product that matches your advertised specifications.   Yes, the menu is still quirky and jumpy, it certainly does not approach Apple devices in terms of interface, but it is cheaper for fucntionality and finally… it is now at least usable.  After 10 months, I will actually be able to use this Fuze+.

I had been waiting for a 45 to 50 GB solid state player with recordable radio for 6 years as I made do with a RockBoxed iRiver iHP-140 hard disk player.  I could have waited as long as the iRiver was still ticking.  But I sold it for $185, purchased your offering and have been without a functional player ever since.  I would have saved $75 bucks and hundreds of hours of time by waiting until today, but hey… now I have it.

I am what Marketing literature refers to as an “opinion leader” and have purchased and/or recommended slews of your previous players to family, friends and coworkers.  I personally never owned one because I was waiting for your supported capacities to reach my requirements, but after they did and I purchased I steered many, many people to the Apple products.   What you need to understand is that people like me are who your potential customers speak with before purchase.  We are not brand loyal so much as functionality and quality loyal. 

I’m going to finally be able to use this device, but I’m a long way from recommending it. 

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yes, gwk1967…Apparently, this firmware update didn’t fix it 

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after the firmware upgrade, nothing has really changed…the capasitive touch control is still troublesome. At times it lags greatly, other times it’s too sensitive. You know, I was psyched a few months ago when I bought this player…after having it this long, I’m really greatly disappointed in this player. I very much feel ripped off. I read ALL the comments on here & I’m not the only one disappointed. Fuze+ was promising but…I’m afraid it has failed. I’m not even sure if they can fix the touch control sensitivity by firmware upgrade alone…It may be a mechanical thing. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they scrapped the Fuze+ & discontinue make them & maybe start on a whole new line. My Insignia Pilot MP3 player from Best Buy was discontinueed in a matter of months.

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“Anyone else having trouble with the menu looping? I haven’t tried every menu and sub-menu, but it seems that the only thing that actually loops is the photo menu.”

All of my menus loop.  But I don’t really care… the only real reason that menu looping was required was that the Artist and Song list were nonfunctinal at high capacties and looping would have allowed a left move that looped around to the right to make to genres.  With 48 GB of music there was no simply way to make it through songs to genres. 

“after the firmware upgrade, nothing has really changed…the capasitive touch control is still troublesome. At times it lags greatly, other times it’s too sensitive. … I’m not even sure if they can fix the touch control sensitivity by firmware upgrade alone…It may be a mechanical thing.”

Yes, still not satisfying when compared to a responsive and well designed UI such as Apple, but the truth is that we finally have what an old software engineer like myself would consider to be an alpha or even beta release, and what a product manager would call 1.0.  There can be no doubt that Sansa released this product about a year before it was ready and failed to test at reasonable capacities, but still… this is a MAJOR release.  As a developer I can assure you that the touch control sensitivity is 100% related to poor software design, not to hardware (“a mechanical thing”).  Hardware simply cannot to be too sensitive or granular… it is poor time slicing in the software that handles the interupts and/or the need to do file system access because of an inefficient indexing strategy  (which we have seen repeatedly over the past 8 months).   This issue pales in significance to the complete failure of the UI when loaded anywhere over 40% of rated capacity that has finally been addressed.  Further fixes in the responsiveness of the UI should be relatively trivial in comparision. 

“You know, I was psyched a few months ago when I bought this player…after having it this long, I’m really greatly disappointed in this player. I very much feel ripped off. I read ALL the comments on here & I’m not the only one disappointed. Fuze+ was promising but…I’m afraid it has failed.”

Yep, me too.  I sold a GREAT player to buy this and then spent over a hundred hours retagging my collection in a vain attempt to swap genres into artists, combine artists, etc just to get to a collection into a form which I could get some minimal usage from the menus.  Sadly, it never did became even minimally functional (until now).  So for me this has been a completely unusable purchase that I haul out of a desk drawer every few months or so for a firmware update after checking the Rockbox site and afterwards, a quick curse at Sansa and a new story for my audiophile friends (who tell their friends). 

I’m not very picky; all that I ever wanted was basic usability in a small form factor for a large collection.  But I really do take offense when I trust a company and get completely ripped off.  Sansa has burned quite a bit of trust with me and I am now hesitant to recommend them.  I really do appreciate the fact that someone at Sansa heard us.  I joined solely because the previous complaints here were way too vague to be actionable and I’m fairly certain that my rather detailed complaints have directly led to this release.  I have to admit that the complete lack of feedback from Sansa made me doubt that this was filtering through to the product managers.

Either way, my job here is done… we finally have the minimum for which we paid and that’s fair enough for me.

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ok…if you done the update & finding out that the menu looping isn’t working…here’s why…simply go into the settings, then customize menu…the option to turn it on/off lies in there.

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Thanks for the upgrades. Now we need an option to keep the display on all the time when connected to external power or for the display to turn on at the end of a song and at the beginning of a song. Also it would be nice to have a play all option for albums that would play all albums one album after another and not all songs. Selecting shuffle all and then turning off shuffle and scrolling to the first song is a workaround but a real pain in the #%$. The original Fuze had the play all option. Thanks

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is it just me or when you turn it on after the logo it just blanks out instead of going to the menu? You need to touch the touch pad in order to get the menu.

backlight: 30 secs

firmware: 02.38.06

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The previous firmware separated audibles from non-drm audiobooks (in the “audiobooks” section).  The audiobooks section still does not have folders, making it useless if you are keeping multiple audiobooks on the device.  It also seems to sort titles in that section alphabetically by title, instead of by track #.

Does anyone know if this will change later?  I have to untag the genre of my audiobooks and listen to them in the music section, or not listen to them at all.

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@alienkid10 wrote:

is it just me or when you turn it on after the logo it just blanks out instead of going to the menu? You need to touch the touch pad in order to get the menu.

 

I noticed that once or twice, but obviously not a show stopper.

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@j_locklear wrote:

ok…if you done the update & finding out that the menu looping isn’t working…here’s why…simply go into the settings, then customize menu…the option to turn it on/off lies in there.

Yes, there seems to be many of us who have not been able to activate looped menus (or maybe it’s just me. :wink:) . Thanks for clearing that up. This is something that I’m excited about.

Also, it seems that my little player to starts up a little faster, now. I’m sure that it has something to do with that so-called “Content library handling improvement”. I have noticed in the past that my device starts up a little faster without the memory card, and that it refreshes the internal memory faster. In fact, the internal memory seems to do everything faster. So, I’m going to assume that there is less activity going on with the internal/external memory, making everything faster. That’s freaking awesome!!! :smileyvery-happy:

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I can browse by folder! Excellent! Now my only big complaint with the fuze+ is how awful the touchpad is.

Just to let people know: when trying to browse by folder, my internal memory initially read as empty. Once I added a new folder though, everything showed up. So if you’re having a similar problem, see if that fixes things for you.

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I figured out the backlight problem. Despite me setting it at 30 and it looking like it’s at 30 it times out at 15. I’ll expiriment with other settings latter weird bug. Also when you turn the device on for a minute+ and set the time then turn it off a few minues later and come back to turn it on then the time is reset to what you last set it to.

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I have problem with flac format. If I have more albums for one artist, display me only one album - ,RTIST=*name of artist*". (When I have only one album for one artist, sometimes display this too). Have anyone same problem?

Sorry for my really bad english :) 

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@zuzle93 wrote:

I have problem with flac format. If I have more albums for one artist, display me only one album - ,RTIST=*name of artist*". (When I have only one album for one artist, sometimes display this too).  Have anyone same problem?

 

Not since the orginal firmware. Have you updated it?

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I have version 02.38.06 A. I updated it yesterday.

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Honestly I wish they added a real useful feature: navigation by letter in some way not that you have to scroll everything :neutral_face:

did they fix the sluggishness with sd + internal memory?