Some Samsung smart fridges stopped working on Tuesday due to a firmware update.
Korean outlets were the first to report the problems, which affect Samsung’s Bespoke AI line of fridges. Star News Korea, per a Google-provided translation, said that most of the affected devices were four-door fridges from 2024 or later.
Wait, so there’s not even a hard thermo in it to fail safely? Well done guys, you really saved 10p per unit on that one
Of all the appliances that could be “smart”, I find the fridge the least exciting.
My heat pump has Wi-Fi. Cool, I can turn it on remotely so it starts heating or cooling my home.
Washing machine that tells you it’s finished and reports the ETA in the meantime - not an entirely unwanted feature, since the same program could take 1 hour or 5 depending on how much laundry I put in. Mine doesn’t have it and I don’t NEED it, but if I’m ever in the market again and two equivalent washing machines from a reputable brand (MAYBE I’d trust Miele. Definitely not Samsung, LG, most others) were priced roughly the same, I’d buy the one with it.
I just can’t think of a world where a smart fridge would work better for me than my dumb one though. I paid a bit extra to get one that had a better efficiency rating and a nearly silent compressor and that’s it. The only things I would find to be “upgrades” over this would be if it was a larger SBS one that made ice, but I decided not to triple the budget from ~600 to ~2000.
How is your laundry taking 5 hours? Just how much are you stuffing in those machines?
A washer that takes that long would be kind of insane, but a drying time in the 4+ hour range isn’t that wild, in my experience.
If my fridge could tell me that my milk is about to expire or if I could query it for what is in it, I would want that. But I cannot really come up with anything that current “smart” appliances have that a fridge could use.
Time for me to get on my Samsung soapbox, and it is for an entirely different reason but very relevant for why you shouldn’t buy a Samsung appliance!
Never. I repeat NEVER, buy a Samsung home appliance. For this reason ONLY. Especially when it comes to food preservation… or simply keeping food cold.
Here is the thing. Samsung will not let approved service repair companies stock parts. I repeat, WILL NOT LET APPROVED SERVICE REPAIR COMPANIES STOCK PARTS. So if you buy a Samsung refrigerator through Home Depot… and it breaks under warranty… you will get an apologetic service technician that will confirm that your appliance is broken.
Great!… I already knew that. That’s why all of my perishables are starting to smell funny. The service person feels bad for you but they don’t have the part to fix your appliance. They can order the part within 24 hours and be back this time tomorrow. Did you already have to take the day off work for the 6 hour service window???
Well this is all super annoying especially if you bought the EXTRA large capacity refrigerator and freezer… that NO ONE has enough coolers and ice to preserve…
Okay, so the service person orders the part and, dang… that wasn’t the problem!
Weird, Okay so NOW the service person will order the more expensive part that is actually the problem. All of the ice in the cooler has melted. All of your cooler food has spoiled.
The refrigerator THREE DAYS LATER is now fixed. F#*k Samsung appliances. And this is the annoying part about all their 5 star reviews. Yeah they look nice when you give them their stars but their reliability is GARBAGE!!!
If an “appliance company” will not let service people stock parts… for the love of god DON’T BUY IT.
Lastly… Samsung ice makers ARE THE WORST!!! You will only have REGRETS. REALLY!!!
Do you have a link to that not-stocking of parts?
Sorry boss gotta take the week off. I’m in mourning.
My fridge is old enough it can purchase alcohol in the US (21+ years old). It has an ice maker and water dispenser, both inside (nothing in the door, fewer things to break). The only tech I would want it to have is something like what you could get with an IoT smart plug - basic metrics like temperature, power draw, door open time, etc.
AFAIK the same model I have is still available in some form, and is still available without any wireless connection capabilities. I’ll probably buy it again.
I wonder how many microphones they put in those smart fridges?
All my verification cans are warm 🤮
The world running on Mega Man Battle Network logic is just as bad of an idea as I thought it was when I played those games as an 11 year old.
Why even design a fridge to stop cooling via an electronic switch? How is that in any way a desirable function? I don’t care what you put in the firmware, there should not be a physical switch that can turn off the cooling via software. That’s what the plug is for.
If you have a microprocessor, you might as well use it to control the thermostat so the user can use software controls instead of a dial
Because people want to set the fridge temperature precisely to 6C, and not turn a century old tech of a mechanical thermostat located inside it to an arbitrary setting between “off” and “three”.
And if you want to be able to do that, an electronic switch is literally the only way: you now have a computer that is responsible of doing “if current_temp > set_temp then compressor = on”. When that computer stops working, so does the fridge.
Not an issue if that’s the only thing that computer does. Probably an issue if it’s complicated enough to support Xbox live streaming so you can play Doom on it.
They could absolutely seperate the controls of the fridge to a nice physical dial that is an accurate thermostat and keep it separate from all the smart functions.
I can’t think of any reason for needing to remotely change the temperature
OK, following scenario: you forgot to drink the verification can for your heater, but you’re on vacation. So the house gets cold and your goldfish are about to die of cold.
You dial in your Smart Fish Feeder™ to increase their rations, so that they can build up some fat. But then they’re unhealthy, and your Smart Fish Feeder™ dropped its Wifi connection anyway.
Instead you dial in your Smart Fridge™ and lower its temperature, so that it functions as a space heater now. Your fish are safe now.
But now your Smart Lock™ opens for safety reasons, as it misinterprets the sudden rise in temperature as a house fire.
When you come home your goldfish left to buy some cigarettes but never came home.
So, a very crucial feature, I’d say.
You don’t even need separate controls. Just have the compressor and temperature controlled by a simple microcontroller which gets commands from the touch screen. Thus if the touch screen crashes the microcontroller keeps the food cold.
That of course requires adding a microcontroller rather than just putting a couple of relays attached to the touch screen…
Ok but was it still able to serve ads??
Of course. Its main function never stopped working
…a smart fridge should be smart enough to still act like a fridge when its confused
we need to start tearing out the garbage. smart appliances aren’t smart, they’re extractive enshittification.
I mean, don’t put it on the network. Now it is dumb again. Mostly. Probably not, ok fine, so just don’t buy one with that shit in it.
my friend lives in rural vermont without internet access (he can get cell phone access at the base of the hill he lives on, but not much else) - and his samsung tv keeps telling him to agree to the terms and services, and the only way to do so is for it to be online. 2-3 times a day an overlay appears and prompts him to sign in to his samsung account and agree lol. he’s so frustrated he wants to return the tv.
even without the network being present, enshittification is all around us
If an automated update bricks my fridge, warranty or not, you owe me a new fridge
If that is a problem, them maybe you shouldn’t have required OTA updates as a requirement for a fridge.
The problem would be solved by not buying a fridge that needs a goddamn firmware update to operate. Just buy a regular, standard fridge. the kind we’ve used for 70+ years. All that smart shit doesnt make your food colder, or last longer, all it is, is cheap slop garbage shoved into a device to turn a 200 dollar device into a 2200 dollar device at little extra cost to the maker.
That is no excuse for the manufacturer not being on the hook for selling garbage, it pushes the work of QA to the consumer.
Only very large fines will end this endless streak of shit appliances. The only silver lining is that these products are targeted at people with more money to sue them.
I think there’s gonna be a renaissance of manufacturers who can charge a slight premium for slightly updated 1950s designs. modern materials, like modern cfc alternatives, but built rock solid, -it just works- tech. knobs. switches.
I’d like to believe that, but I can’t see it happening.
Of course, there is a tractor company in Alberta, Canada that is making old school tractors without all the bells and whistles, and selling them for a fraction of what John Deere charges.
So maybe…
I can dream lol.
slate truck too.
Mind you, even relatively simple fridges can technically have firmware because these days the cheapest way to implement something like a defrost timer is with a microcontroller. Of course that firmware is so simple that it doesn’t need updates and definitely doesn’t need to be connected to the internet.
Other than that I don’t really see what a smart fridge can do that you can’t cover by sticking a cheap tablet on the fridge door. Sure, maybe a smart fridge can order butter from Amazon when it thinks that yours runs out but you can do the same with your phone and “buy it again” in seconds. Assuming that you even want to buy your groceries from an e-retailer.
It’s definitely a pointless price inflation device that makes the fridge less reliable to boot.
I’m honestly surprised that a smart fridge wasn’t basically that. That seems like the kind of lazy shortcut you’d expect to see, rather than everything being run off the one computer.
And this is why the only Samsung products I have are RAM and SSDs.
And the SSDs are backed up daily.
Samsung should not have gotten into appliances. They seem to be singularly terrible in that field. No-one else comes even close to their incompetence.
LG comes pretty close to their level of incompetence.
Our last LG set of washer+dryer lasted 14 years.
We got a new set when we moved into our current place 6 years ago.
Now granted I am not satisfied with the lack of control in our LG appliances, where certain settings seem to be locked to defaults. For example, I would love to see longer drying at lower temps, as the temps seem to be unmodifiable regardless of tumble profile. However, so far we are seeing sufficient performance and no flaws.
Our next set will be Huebsch, which is the Canadian re-badge of Speed Queen (something we only discovered in 2026), but we honestly don’t see a purchase within the next decade or more.
“Owners” lol
“WE OWN THE FRIDGE” - some data gathering company probably
in case you’re not aware, LG employees literally said “we own the glass” about the TVs and spying on what people were playing on it
Too obvious, we need to workshop that. How about “We own the ICE”. Also someone needs to implement the “partnered groceries” program so people stop pirating cold air. I am sick of people side loading food. Third party and homebrew food is a huge security risk after all.
Subscription to run a refrigerator 💀💀💀💀
you wouldn’t download a fridge
