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.
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.
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.
Chaebol being chaebol. They’ll try selling anything with a short lifespan and lots of useless frills just for a little more profit.
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.
Ok but was it still able to serve ads??
…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
I seriously doubt these fridges need to have any of that firmware added.
That’s exactly how I see it as well. What is the use of a firmware update for a fucking fridge, washing machine or dishwasher, if not to either brick it to meet the planned obsolescence phase or to grab your data in a more effective way for advertising?
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.
Can I ask one fucking question?
What is the advantage of a ‘smart’ fridge? No really. What does it do better? I saw a review of toasters from cheap toasters to crazy expensive toasters (that I believe were from a generation still not Internet connected) that did show that the really really expensive one did have better performance in getting the toast just perfect… But fridges? What do they do better?
They should stop mouring the food, and start suing for damages
“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
Don’t connect your fridge to the internet. Just don’t.
But how else will it get important updates that protect it from the latest online threats?
Also, don’t get Samsung appliances. They’ve always been utter trash. Washers, dryers, fridges, and dishwashers all suck.
Right? Just because a networked version exists, doesn’t make it a good idea.
I just don’t see the utility. I can be pretty pro “smart” stuff, especially if I can run it without an internet connection, but what’s the point for a fridge?
Like an oven I get, though I don’t have one. It’s laziness but there is some utility in being able to preheat the oven without getting up, or double check the oven was turned off. Although newer ovens tend to have rapid preheating that really can be quick (unlike my 1996 oven that takes 15-20+ minutes)
But a fridge? What are you going to do? Ensure it’s running? Except when something like this happens lmao. The only real thing it could add is an advertisement and data collection vector, which is the opposite of utility. I’ve also seen smart toasters. Not toaster ovens, but like pop in two slices of bread and push the plunger. Why? You have to come to the device to load it. Do you leave bread overnight getting stale and save the 30 seconds and greatly raise the risk of cold toast? Ridiculous
In a perfect world, operating totally on my local network I’d love if my fridge and freezer took pictures of things as I was putting them in and taking them out to automatically maintain an inventory. If it didnt require external servers, it really could be great. Hell, even if it gave me the option of local execution it could be great.
But this is the real world and we can’t gave nice things. This should never have been a failure mode at all. If the computer in these things decides to stop working, it takes fairly few things make it run like a dumb fridge. They just decided that was unacceptable, so here we are.
I have similar feelings about washers and dryers. I’d love to hook it up to my mqtt broker and get local notifications when it finishes. But there is zero reason whatsoever for it to reach the internet.
I went to buy a steamer, because my last one finally fell apart. And I happen to mention I’ll be after a toaster next, did they have the brand/model I like (it’s just been tested to toast well) the salesguy says oh have you heard about the ai one, I’m getting one, they’re such a saving atm, down from $600 to $400! I straight up said wtf, why. He said oh it looks at your toast while you toast it. It was so hard not to let him know he is a fucking idiot. He wasn’t trying to sell me on it, he genuinely wanted to buy it for himself.
Eh, for a toaster it at least makes some sense to have ‘smarts’ for ensuring various types of bread reach the desired crispynes (Lathough none of that needs internet or anything close to 400$ in value). So it would still be more usefull then smart fridge.
Toasters could do that in the fifties. Crispiness is directly related to surface temperature and you can detect that with nothing fancier than a bimetal strip and some clever engineering. If you want to use modern technology you could use an IR sensor and a two cent microcontroller.
Using AI for the task suggests that they stuck a camera in there and use image processing to badly simulate an IR sensor. Less reliable than two metal strips welded together but also way more expensive.
You know those influencers who get like a few million views from building silly Rube Goldberg Machines?.. That’s the only thing I can think of to justify the toaster, and then it’s literally just taking the place of an RC actuator.
As for the fridge, the only thing I can think of is you’re one of those people who constantly forgets what they went shopping for, and need to video stream the interior of the fridge to check if you’re out of something.
As for the fridge, the only thing I can think of is you’re one of those people who constantly forgets what they went shopping for, and need to video stream the interior of the fridge to check if you’re out of something.
But how is that smart? It’s just a fridge with a camera connected to the internet. Oh, it’s like my washing machine with “AI”*: it connects to the internet, and all it can go is start and stop, but there’s a caveat… If enabled through online, you cannot start it physically it’s my brothers old one, never connected to the internet in my house.
*
AI stands for American Intelligence. It’s a hill I’ll die on.
I didn’t say it was a good solution. Especially when you make the whole fundamental function of the fridge dependent on the network.
My electric toothbrush has bluetooth. How much free time does someone have to track and analyze their toothbrushing?
Sticking it in a toaster reminds me of when LCD clocks first came out. They stuck them in EVERYTHING. Even table lamps had little clocks stuck in them. Then when LED lights came out everything had to have super bright led lights all over them. One to show you it was off, one to show you it was on, etc, etc. Same with everyone had to have a website in the 90s or a mobile app later. Now everything has to be connected to the internet because, well they can. There is no real reason for it except marketing.
tft lcds got in this too because they’re so dirt cheap and capacitive touch interfaces are cheap as fuck to manufacture. Even if the parts costs are a tiny bit higher relative to physical buttons and interfaces the money saved on assembly makes up for it (and in some cases the parts actually are cheaper
Plus in a kitchen or bathroom setting this is much easier to make water and dust resistant, which is an actual benefit tbf, but at the expense of ergonomics and accessibility
You can literally go on Amazon right now and search LCD toaster. There’s the $4-500 ultra bougie American designed (not made lol) smart one but then there are a ton of Chinese designed ones that are like $50-60 because it’s a $20 toaster with a (when bought at scale) $0.95 lcd strapped on
Marketing is dumb, this is why I left ui/ux/hci work. You can create an ergonomic and intuitive system that is evidence based and the ad men will be like “but can we pander to the lowest common denominator by ruining it with some useless feature that’s objectively worse to use?” And then they just dropped the pretense and said fuck ux, embrace dark patterns
I could bitch about this for days
My electric toothbrush has bluetooth.
Someone bought it before it got to you. There is likely a version without bluetooth that was not purchased.
If people keep spending more money for it, they will keep making it.
I have a compressor travel fridge. I’ve had it for about six years. The display died this summer, so I had a hard time knowing what temperature it was set to, or if it was even on. (Crotch goblins love to press buttons that go beep).
Anywho, I got a new display circuit for it with Bluetooth. The only reason I paired my phone to it is so others can’t fiddle with the settings at the local campground.
Same thing with my e-bike. I don’t want someone else pairing their phone with it and locking me out.
Same thing with my e-bike.
Oh shit, man. I kind of want an e-bike, but I’d never want one with a phone app. It had better be usable without one, or I’m saying fuck it and building my own. And if I had the misfortune of accidentally buying one with any sort of wireless connectivity, I’d be sorely tempted to tear its electronics apart and find some way to permanently and physically disable that connectivity.
I’d never want one with a phone app. It had better be usable without one
My e-bike has a phone app, and it’s great. Of course it works without the app, but it’s super useful to be able to plan a ride from the comfort of my couch and send it to my bike instead of entering it on the bike’s screen. Especially if it’s a route with multiple waypoints.
I just don’t see the utility. I can be pretty pro “smart” stuff, especially if I can run it without an internet connection, but what’s the point for a fridge?
About ten minutes ago I installed a smart bulb in my fridge. I plan to set up an automation in Home Assistant to tell me when the fridge has been open too long. I also have a temp sensor near the compressor because I had an issue with the fan going out and now if the temp is too high I get an alert to check on it.
I also have a temp sensor in the freezer and the main fridge, again to alert me when things go wrong.
See that’s utility and depending on the sensors you choose that can definitely be local only
But skimming the page for a Samsung smart fridge none of this is in the features. It’s that it can play music, you can put notes and pictures and shit, there’s an “ai camera” that can tell you what you need to buy (though something tells me that struggles if your fridge isn’t set up like a stock image and is actually loaded with like food and condiments and shit like a normal person)
A Bluetooth speaker can do the music part likely with much better sound quality, a smart speaker can handle the typical kitchen tasks like setting timers (which can be done purely in HA, you don’t need Alexa or whatever), a dry erase board and magnets can cover notes and pictures, and the reminders app on your phone can probably do a much more accurate job of keeping a shopping list. Then you can buy a fridge that doesn’t have a 32” proprietary lcd that is a major point of failure, and you can literally save thousands of dollars (quick search shows these fridges are 3500-4k, which is insane for a fridge, even a fancy huge one).
The market for these is people who have too much money (or are willing to take on credit debt) but also can’t be bothered to spend the 1-2 hours it takes to read up on how to do what you’ve done. Samsung, Apple, Google, Amazon, etc prey on these people
The top of the line one can make spherical ice though, which is admittedly super cool
The market for these is people who have too much money (or are willing to take on credit debt) but also can’t be bothered to spend the 1-2 hours it takes to read up on how to do what you’ve done.
Nah. The market for this is people who go shopping for a new fridge and then see this shiny, flashy thing that the other fridges don’t have. And then “Ooh, shiny!” And then the salesman comes by and gives them a quick pitch about how this is ‘the way of the future’, soon all fridges will be like this and they don’t want to be left behind with a soon-to-be-obsolete dumb fridge, do they? And due to having more money and/or credit than sense, they nod along and sign on the dotted line, because obviously, they want ‘the best’ fridge, right? And how can any other fridge be ‘the best’ if it doesn’t have this flashy, eye-catching feature on the front of it?
We’re kind of describing the same people I think
there’s an “ai camera” that can tell you what you need to buy (though something tells me that struggles if your fridge isn’t set up like a stock image and is actually loaded with like food and condiments and shit like a normal person)
What do you mean? You don’t individually label and color coordinate Tupperware containers every time you put leftovers in the fridge?
*looks at three brown grocery bags of vegetables I didn’t bother to unpack and five rubbermaids, one upside down, tossed randomly in fridge*
looks at three brown grocery bags of vegetables I didn’t bother to unpack and five rubbermaids, one upside down, tossed randomly in fridge
AI: “You seem to be running low on Nvidia, Alphabet, and Tesla stock. Let me order more shares for you.”
I installed a smart bulb in my fridge. I plan to set up an automation in Home Assistant to tell me when the fridge has been open too long.
My fridge just beeps at me if the door has been open more than a minute or two.
It’s not a ‘smart’ fridge, either. You don’t need anything complex to accomplish that. I guess that the interior fridge light is wired in parallel with a simple timer circuit, and if that timer circuit is energized long enough for its pre-set timer to run out, it energizes the beeping circuit.
You could do a similar thing with your fridge. No need for network connectivity and computers to be involved. Just find the circuit that goes to the light bulb and wire in a simple electronic timer in parallel.
My (not yet installed) heat pump water heater wants to be connected to the internet. Can’t imagine why I’d want to do that. I know its for peak rate electricity management or whatever, something my town doesn’t seem to do due to being mostly hydroelectric, but it has a whole button pad and screen and shit built into the side of it, I think I can manage without the app syphoning my phone data, thanks. Besides, it uses so little electric I probably won’t even bother programming that.
Likely for ToU rates, I could imagine looking out for weather updates, if there’s a likely power outage I could see it heating the water another 5 or 10 degrees so it’ll last longer/provide “more” hot water?
le sigh. I’d like to have a home with systems that do things like…synchronize to a clock more accurate and reliable than one I can feasibly own myself, that others such as the utility companies are using. I’d like to be able to get weather alerts and have the refrigerator automatically get a degree colder the water heater get five or ten degrees hotter, run the HVAC a bit, charge batteries, etc.
What I don’t want are a thousand little ARM computers each one a member of three different botnets trying to scrape my home network, sending audio, video, FLIR and radar telemetry straight to Kim Jong Fuck’s third testicle from the left, while also DDOSing Amnesty International and waiting for the cpu.detonate() command to come down so it’s time to buy another fucking desk lamp.
And I’ll bet if it fails the pump stops too and the whole board has to be replaced for $500+.
You can likely call the company to tweak the configuration of yours based on the telemetry. Been there, done that with Vaillant. Nice to be able to get help without involving a tech given how expensive they are - and no tech on site will have the data Vaillant has on my heatpump which means that the tech decisions will always be inferior.
Having an alert go off if it gets too warm would be useful. That just needs a smart temperature sensor connected to your HA server though.
Skill issue. Put it on an IoT vlan or subnet and keep it off the internet. Tunnel in and reap any benefits without internet exposure. Only thing that needs to stay updated is the tunnel and it’s host. Headscale is nice
Seems like a lot more work than just remembering to make a list before you leave home.
Or just get a tablet and stick it to the fridge with magnets if you want a place for your digital calendar or whatever
Leave the fucking compressor out of it
I agree, we don’t need smart fridges, we need dumb fridges
But how else am I going to get on that sweet sweet subscription service for keeping my food cold?
Temperatures below 35F require Chilly-Tier pro or higher
You already have that; it’s called the electricity bill
I’m on solar and batteries. I haven’t had an electricity bill in years.
That’s the joke. Tech companies have started taking away basic functions, so they can then sell it back to you as a subscription. BMW’s heated seat subscription comes to mind. All BMWs are equipped with heated seats by default, but you can only turn the heater on if you pay a subscription for it.
but you can only turn the heater on if you pay a subscription for it.
*opens electrical repair kit with malicious intent*
(I wonder if BMW would try to sue you for finding a way to bypass this and turn on the heated seats without it? I wonder if they’d sue you if you turned this solution into a relatively easy-to-install mod product that others could install…)
In the US, my understanding is you can do it, but helping others do it (by publishing a how-to, selling a kit, even doing it for them) would be where you’d run afoul with the law
Interesting … what law would they use to justify that?
Don’t buy appliances with network capability at all.
And don’t buy fridges and other appliances from big techs. Period. Get them from industries specialized on that, who have been manufacturing appliances for a long time, like people did all this time
In some countries, the biggest appliance makers got into tech or bought by them, so there’s not a huge amount of choice there. I’m not sure about SK in particular. Thankfully, dumb fridges are still a thing here in Japan, but I don’t know how long that will last given how many of the major brands are also high-tech companies (Panasonic, Sharp, etc.)
Better yet, buy them used on the second-hand market.
I can’t imagine spending more than, say, $60 on a fridge. If you’ve got time to wait and look for good deals, you can often even find working ones (or easily repairable ones) for free.
Who could have possibly seen this coming
And that’s why the last time I went and bought appliances, I had to ask/look up if the item I was looking at required an app or firmware updates.
It was not exactly an ideal experience.
“Does this appliance have networking, require an app, or have a firmware update feature?” should not be a question required before the purchase of virtually anything, let alone something for the kitchen.
Unless you’re an influencer or deranged, in which case: carry on. I’m not going to kink shame you.
Oh man, maybe people should stop buying these. I bet they totally won’t though.
