Sansa Fuze+ Firmware 02.38.06

@ariomvet wrote:

Sorry, if this is not a regular chanel for my question, but this is my first post in sansa forum, well, my question is the next: Can I updating my sansa fuze+, with the last firmware, without updating with the past version?..

I bought a Sansa Fuze+ on June, and I havent never update the firmware.

thank you very much. 

Grettings from Peru.

All firmware ‘updates’ are all-inclusive, meaning that you do not have to install all of them. The latest one will have everything that the previous ones did, plus the latest changes.

Sandro:  "- takes at least 5h to recharge

  • IMPOSSIBLE to scroll trough albums/songs/artists, yes IMPOSSIBLE (unless you have 2 albums). so forget choosing the song to listen to, either you put it in shuffle mode or you can spend 10 minutes to search for each specific song

  • while recharging doesn’t show the status!

  • cant even keep the time

  • takes 1 minute to load for reasons we will never know

  …

Was I too harsh? Think twice""

Hi Sandro,

I largely agree with most all of your criticisms and as you know I certainly lit the fire that finally led to Firmware 02.38.06.  It really was prematurely released by over a year and still is far from the quality of a shipping product.  But yes, I think you’re a little too harsh here. 

The slow load, the feedbackless 5 hour charge, the navigatonal difficulites are all indeed beyond amateur coding.  However, the load used to be even slower and when it finally finished it shut right off unless you tapped it.  At least now you can start it, put it down and then grab it in a minute.  The 5 hour charge is a known quantity, I just live with it… we don’t need feedback to know that it’s a charging dog.    Navigation is indeed super touchy and has a freeze/jump quality to it which is very amateur… but it is no longer impossilbe to get to a song or album. Before it really was physcially impossilbe to make it through the song list to the genres… it really was unachievable.  Now it is lame, but it is usable.  And there is the folder mode, which works perfectly.  On the time issue, outside of a sleep mode, why would anyone care if this thing even knew the time? 

Sandro:   " I just cannot believe that the developers can’t fix those things or that they actually released it like it was in the first place. It ■■■■■ now, imagine how it was with the very first firmware! there must be someone above them driving the programmers to stupidity."

I think that you might have this a little backwards.  I’ve worked for a few companies who have moved their software development offshore and although there is no way to be certain, in my estimation this has all of the hallmarks of offshore development .  A change in team would explain the incredible 3 year lag in getting out a new Fuze+.  Furthermore, the defining characteristic of offshore programming is a siloed almost tunnel visioned apporach to fixing a bug without consideration of what else may break, ie the interrelationship of the current block of code with other portions of the application.  This is why virtually every change, even simple ones, repeatedly breaks other parts of the Sansa software (clock.podcasts,timer, etc).  The traditional U.S. software development approach (where all this stuff was invented) was to create decoupled resusable stateless compenents while thinking holistically about and viewing the applicaton in its entirety… pretty much the polar opposite approach of this device.

Judging by the stellar software design of the older Sansa devices, I assume that those product managers are probably used to specifying the features that they need to a team that has a meeting of the minds, says “Gotcha, know exactly what you mean” and then goes off and implements.  It just doesnt’ work that way offshore.  My guess is that this all started by showing the team some visual aspects of the iPod.  The PM’s probably anticipated that the team would “get it” but then they started from the user interface down with no sense of the great feel and interdepency of the UI and the indexing and timing interaction. Offshore development is a very linear and scripted approach.  Understanding of UI goals from a human facotrs or tactile aspect  is completely outside of the mindset and the PM’s would have actually had to delve into the feel and timing specifications in great detail to acheive any success.  This is why this development is so fast but so fragile and unsatisfying.  Contrast this with Apple’s approach where the slapping together of the physical components is moved to the cheapest stable location and the brains are in Cupertino with an engaged software team collaborating with a visionary and expert techncial human factors people.  The difference is palpable.

Let us be thankful that this is only an mp3 player and not the medical and financial systems where I first encountered and learned to understand this issue.

heavy:

“Flexibility should have been built in allowing you to select (as you can in Explorer) how the individual files are presented once you get down to the folder level. (honestly it’s not that difficult, all you have to do is is use a different part of the media information when you’re processing an individual track and building the key).”

Hi heavy,

There is a lot to complain about in the Sansa Fuze+ but you have homed in on the Folder View… the sole aspect of the system which is solid!

Folder mode works perfectly.  Directories sorted by name, files within them sorted by name.  Why would you want to mix media information with the physical file names?  The whole point of folder mode is to make the device navigable for non tagged or poorly tagged collectons or for those users such as Sandro and I with large collections who were once fighting a near unresponsive and now mediocrly responsive interface.  You do know that you can hit the directories with MP3Tag or something and rename the files automatically based on your tags.  But from your post, I think that your tagging is probably a big whacked so I doubt that any approach can make you happy.

I have purchased a 32 Gb iPhone to replace my beloved and recently deceased Treo.  I wouldn’t have gone with it, but as I had the Sansa Fuze+ instead of a usable mp3 player I went for it.  Being honest, the iPod interface on the iPhone is so far beyond the reach of the Sansa development team that I will probably never seriously use the Sansa Fuze+ (even though I can fit less than half of the content what I want on the iPhone).  With the iPhone, even when Rockbox is ready and we have a great unit, I won’t get much use of it.  However, I am about to use the Fuze+ extensively around a hot tub, a pool and on the beach for a few weeks… something that I’d never do with my iPhone.  I am really looking forward to it!   Last year at this time we did the same and all of us were comparing mp3 players and we all had quite a laugh at the expense of the lame Fuze+.  This year it will be a lot different.

I am trying to update a Fuze that has not been used in a couple of years. It works and plays the songs. However it does not showup on iTunes, or any other directory such as C: removable drive. How can I get it to be seen so I can update it? 

Very nice post fusionnow!

About the scrolling thing, I can’t use it, I don’t understand how it can be defined “usable”. I can’t scroll through songs because it’s too slow it takes minute to chose a song, i can’t call this “usable” if the point of a media player is this basically.

Other comments are to demonstrate how amateur this software is, that can’t even do simple tasks.

I think that for my main problem (the scrolling) adding a way to scroll though alphabet letters would resolve it.

a Fuze or a Fuze+ ?? they ARE different

i ask because you said you havn’t used your Fuze in a couple years

and i dont think the Fuze+ has been out “a couple years” *yet

@fuzionnow wrote:

heavy:

“Flexibility should have been built in allowing you to select (as you can in Explorer) how the individual files are presented once you get down to the folder level. (honestly it’s not that difficult, all you have to do is is use a different part of the media information when you’re processing an individual track and building the key).”

 

Hi heavy,

 

There is a lot to complain about in the Sansa Fuze+ but you have homed in on the Folder View… the sole aspect of the system which is solid!

 

Folder mode works perfectly.  Directories sorted by name, files within them sorted by name.  Why would you want to mix media information with the physical file names?  The whole point of folder mode is to make the device navigable for non tagged or poorly tagged collectons or for those users such as Sandro and I with large collections who were once fighting a near unresponsive and now mediocrly responsive interface.  You do know that you can hit the directories with MP3Tag or something and rename the files automatically based on your tags.  But from your post, I think that your tagging is probably a big whacked so I doubt that any approach can make you happy.

 

I have purchased a 32 Gb iPhone to replace my beloved and recently deceased Treo.  I wouldn’t have gone with it, but as I had the Sansa Fuze+ instead of a usable mp3 player I went for it.  Being honest, the iPod interface on the iPhone is so far beyond the reach of the Sansa development team that I will probably never seriously use the Sansa Fuze+ (even though I can fit less than half of the content what I want on the iPhone).  With the iPhone, even when Rockbox is ready and we have a great unit, I won’t get much use of it.  However, I am about to use the Fuze+ extensively around a hot tub, a pool and on the beach for a few weeks… something that I’d never do with my iPhone.  I am really looking forward to it!   Last year at this time we did the same and all of us were comparing mp3 players and we all had quite a laugh at the expense of the lame Fuze+.  This year it will be a lot different.

FWIW, you’re misquoting me and I totally agree with you.

Does anyone have the problem with their SD card where it dosen’t recognise it on start up and you have eject and reinsert the card to get it to read? It’s not a major problem but if anyone know how to sort it out it would be a big help.

I have a 2gb Sandisk micro SD card

Hi

On the french page for sansa fuze+ it is written: " Méthode 2 - La mise à jour manuelle en téléchargeant le Firmware depuis le forum SanDisk

  1. Allez sur Sansa Fuze+ firmware update board sur le Forum SanDisk.  "

and I see that I must downlod Firmware 01.29.03 

but on this forum there is a firmware 02.38.06

Is it a firmware for me ? Is it the last firmware ?

download the firmware in this thread.

Thank you, so it is in french … :smiley:

Reassure me, there are technicians who work on the update of the French internet pages? There are technicians who work on the resolution of the bugs of the fuze +? I think that each would like to know about the next evolutions, sometimes I post message but nobody answers I have never seen that at the price of the fuze +, it is really surprising.

“Very nice post fusionnow!”

Thanks Sandro, just trying to warn customers and help the development team and the product managers be all that they can be.  I’d rather be writing raving reviews like the old days…

"About the scrolling thing, I can’t use it, I don’t understand how it can be defined “usable”. I can’t scroll through songs because it’s too slow it takes minute to chose a song, i can’t call this “usable” if the point of a media player is this basically.

Other comments are to demonstrate how amateur this software is, that can’t even do simple tasks.

I think that for my main problem (the scrolling) adding a way to scroll though alphabet letters would resolve it."

Yes, I was a little overly dismissive on that one.  I don’t use song scrolling at all.  My whole view of song list was that it was so bad… so unbelievably horribly implemented, that it prevented me from getting through from “albums” to “genres”.  Artist response was awful, Album response was awful… my only hope for playing a large collecton was to combine a lot of like artists into genres and random play within them.  Problem was that I needed to get through the “songs” screen to make it “genres” and in hundreds of tries the device inactivity timeout always kicked in before the song list would respect another swipe to genres.  So, with this latest firmware… the mere ability to make it through the song list to the genres was a HUGE SUCCESS from my perspective. How sad is that?

But now that I’ve played with it a bit in environments (beach, sun, hot tub) where I’d never take a real mp3 player or an iPhone I have to agree with you.  The song list really needs a lot of work.  And I will say that although the device is now finally minimally usuable, I share the prevalent view of the “hyperactive” user interface and the tactile software response (event handling) have a long way to go.   I have kept my mega-tagging strategy and I combine like artists and genres to the full extent possible.  Getting any usefulness out of this device whatsoever is all about combatting the design flaws and tagging like mad to make any list shorter, cause processing any long list of data (artists, songs, genres, albums) sems to be the bane of this software design.

Heavy,

“FWIW, you’re misquoting me and I totally agree with you.”

Cool, glad to see that we are in total agreement but my quoting actually was verbatim… 

If you want to be in complete synchronicity, you could edit your posts to remove reference to “media sorts”, etc and just agree that folder sort is by name, simple and just fine for that purpose.  Remember, with a tool like MP3Tag you can instantly (well, almost) make 9,000 mp3’s sort just as you like with file rename recursive through folders.  If you have tagging, it is super fast.  If you don’t, you’re stuck with existing filename… which is after all exactly what folder sort uses.   No media tagging needed… that’s for tagged play, kapisch?

So… by definition we are in violent agreement!

Honestly the only way out I see is dump this product and start developing a new one, an intelligent one this time.

They keep fixing the unfixable. I mean how long are they gonna release firmware upgrades for this product? It’s going to stop eventually and apparently before any major change.

and do what to those of us who bought and have it under warrenty still?

I was just saying

Looked 10 pages in and i didnt see any of the Time bug topics… were they deleted ?

I hope they don’t think this issue is solved on this firmware version and if this is the case

please enlighten me Sansa on how to get my clock to work after a reboot please

I came to the conclusion they don’t even know what they’re doing because it’s impossible at this point to still have this awful firmware

I understand your frustration.

I do want to be fair to Sansa (and the community around here)

There IS problems with the device but considering what I would do in there position makes me

think trying to design and build a player with the large amount of features the Fuze+ has, MUST be hard.

I just really wish we had some *more (or any) feedback from the firmware developer(s)

Like what bugs they are aware off AND working on for a future firmware update.

I really think if they were upfront about the development status it would ease

a lot of aggressive frustration around here.

Im tempted to do some down grading of my firmware to see if I can fix the power usage / time bug issues

those two problems are the most irritating to me… Having to use a separate device just to check the time ■■■■■…

Sometimes I don’t carry my cell phone and the Power usage when the device is off bug worries me because

lithium ion batteries have a finite life span and I don’t like the idea that my device is degrading while OFF !

I wonder if the two problems are some how related ?