Fedigest
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.
Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges
![[image] Owners mourn spoiled food after firmware update bricks Samsung smart fridges](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Samsung-Bespoke-AI-3-Door-Refrigerator-AutoView-950x534-1-1152x648-1790182604.jpg)
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
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?
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Maybe, I got it because it was discounted and I didn't know it had that feature when I got it.
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.
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.
::: spoiler * 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.
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.
I have a tiny, battery powered temperature/humidity sensor in my fridge, connected to Home Assistant.
I don't actually need it there, but I was interested to know if it would work, and it did. So now I know that my fridge maintains a steady 5⁰C.
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
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
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*
AI: "You seem to be running low on Nvidia, Alphabet, and Tesla stock. Let me order more shares for you."
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.
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.
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.
You don't have to pair it with you phone.. but if I don't, what's doing somebody else from doing it and e-locking it when I leave it on the street.
Prying it open and tearing the wifi/bluetooth antenna off of its circuit board.
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.
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
What benefits could you reap from having your fridge connected to the internet? I'm seriously asking because the thought never occurred to me, but then again, I live in a tiny apartment, I can walk like 8 steps and I'm opening the fridge door. Maybe other people have bigger houses and takes half a day to get to the thing.
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
Also, don't get Samsung appliances. They've always been utter trash. Washers, dryers, fridges, and dishwashers all suck.
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
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.
*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?
I'm on solar and batteries. I haven't had an electricity bill in years.
Don't buy appliances with network capability at all.
I agree, we don’t need smart fridges, we need dumb fridges
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.
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?
They should stop mouring the food, and start suing for damages
Spend $10k to recover $700 of ruined food?
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?
rather than mourn, are they going after Samsung to replace said food? When I worked best buy our warranty covered food spoilage up to 2 years I believe (if it was the fridge/freezer's fault, not just a random power outage or something). I'd expect Samsung to do the same.
During Chuseok, which is Korean Thanksgiving on Fri no less. Samsung must be grateful it's a chaebol and controls at least half the country
Perfect timing
The usefulness of a smart fridge always seemed dubious to me, but why the hell is the refrigeration part managed by the smart part? It's literally just a pump.
Having a camera to check the inside when you are at the shop to remember something you forgot it's nice but I wouldn't trade that for enshitification when it can be achieved with a RPI.
If the fridge operation depends on a simple thermostat and compressor, then it's more reliable and can be repaired with lamp wire and a soldering iron if it does break. Samsung would rather have a system depending on a control board they build for $3 and sell you for $600 when it breaks.
They change the firmware and connectors every year or two to make sure no one can build a universal replacement
Yup. We used to have a fridge built in the early 80s (possibly late 70s) that lasted until 2015. Ugly ass harvest gold color and everything. Ran it continuously. Had to have it repaired maybe twice in all that time. We moved out and left it behind; for all I know it's still going (though probably not because it was truly an eyesore).
The point is that a well built refrigerator can last decades, same as other major appliances like washing machines and dryers. No computerization necessary at all. Our fridge was not the most energy efficient by the end, obviously, but apart from that . . . why not build them to last?
Greed. Just overwhelming, all-consuming corporate greed.
Electrical controls are cheapers
Like not controls as in the "colder" knobs, but what senses and maintains the temp. When/if that turns off, the fridge can't tell what temp it is. It could be zero or 100, shutting off ruins the food, but not turning off would permanently break the fridge.
One of the few silver linings to data centers is it may change the math and we'll start to see old school 1950s "dumb" appliances again just because the components for a smart fridge are now more expensive.
Our prices won't go down, but at least it'll be a dumb fridge that gets replaced in 40 years instead of the new ones that barely last a decade.
Because how else will they enshittify it?
Chaebol being chaebol. They'll try selling anything with a short lifespan and lots of useless frills just for a little more profit.
Don't buy a smart fridge, simple as.
Sadly I can see a future where the non-smart option will no longer be available. Or very limited in choice for the consumer.
It's already the case with TVs. The next logical step is to make it so it will refuse to work unless you connect it to the internet to "activate" it or even worse have it connect to the cellular network to be always on-line whether the owner of the device is aware of it or not. The vast majority of the consumers are still completely ignorant about this and buy this crap.
Fortunately appliances seem to still offer plenty of "non smart" options for now. But who knows what it will be in 10 years?
They’ll still be available. They’ll just be prohibitively expensive for the average person, because their cost won’t be subsidized by the data collection.
Your TV example is actually great, because you can easily get a dumb TV… As long as you’re willing to pay 3x as much for it. Commercial displays are meant to be used for things like digital signage in lobbies, digital menus in restaurants, meeting room displays, hospital patient listings at nurse stations and patient TVs inside of each hospital room, etc… They’re truly dumb displays (sometimes they have things like wireless display mirroring and AirPlay ready to go, to make things like meetings easier), and they don’t have any data collection. But they’re more expensive, because the corporate clients are paying for reliability and consistency.
Because corporate clients are concerned with things like HIPAA violations at a nurse’s station, and corporate espionage. Imagine if patient info leaked because a smart TV was listening to nurses conversations and running OCR on the patient info displayed on the screen. Imagine if corporate secrets leaked because a meeting room TV was sending screenshots of a PowerPoint presentation back to the manufacturer.
So yes, dumb appliances are 100% still going to be available. They simply won’t be affordable, because individuals aren’t the target market. The target market is corporate clients. Dumb fridges will still be a thing in professional kitchens, because no restaurant manager wants to deal with a smart fridge. But that dumb fridge will be designed with professional kitchens in mind. It won’t fit in a standard house’s kitchen, because it’s not designed for that.
With tvs, The smart part has some use for most people. They want to connect to the internet and see their shows and movies. The data stealing, obsolescence, etc are things that most people fail to notice when buying, because they don't have much knowledge on it. But smart fridges? They simply offer no benefit at all, and with a higher price. I find it very unlikely that they will become the norm on a global scale.
I feel like the difference is that basically everyone who is non-techy wants a smart TV, but practically nobody wants a smart fridge or toaster.
This.
An appliance should turn on when I turn it on, turn off when I turn it off, do the task I instruct it to when I instruct it to, and do nothing that I do not instruct it to. Its status should be clearly indicated to the user with a few LEDs, or a numerical display if needed. Its behavior should be entirely predictable at all times, until eventual mechanical failure due to wear.
If an appliance design fails any of these checks, it is a bad design.
If any function of the appliance is dependent on a network connection, it fails the checks because:
Don't buy "smart" appliances. Ever.
At some point it will be impossible to buy one that isn't.
Surely there'll be independent services for smart device lobotomy coming.
If there will be a sufficient request, someone will built them.
This is why we shouldn't buy them now. If they don't sell well, they will follow a similar fate of 3D TVs.
I think a big difference is that many people (in the US, at least) don't choose their own fridge. Renters often have the fridge included with the home. There's far fewer people who could reasonably inflict such a boycott.
Landlords will be the last ones to buy premium appliances. Your average apartments are always gonna have the workhorse basic Frigidaire and Whirlpool type appliances.
Speaking of renters I'm looking at my whirlpool washer/dryer. Old ass dishwasher, stove, and fridge. Nothing smart and all knobs. The dryer is the newest because our old Kenmore finally died a couple of years ago, but all of the controls are mechanical.
Oh, man... That would be such a nightmare, moving into a new apartment and finding it full of smart appliances you're not allowed to replace...
Oh man, maybe people should stop buying these. I bet they totally won’t though.
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.
Who could have possibly seen this coming
I've got a Samsung fridge. Don't be me.
To use the buttons inside the fridge (for temp control, etc), you have to push the "unlock keys" button for 3 seconds. This isn't a nuclear missile launcher, it's a fridge. Idiots.
To clean the bottom shelves, you have to uninstall them... this is an absurdly difficult task. I had to look up how to do so online. It's infuriating. It's a shelf.
The ice maker has one vulnerability; ice. If the fridge temperature is too cold (under 38f) the ice machine doesn't work.
Fortunately, I didn't connect it to network. I hate it.
You'd appreciate that if you had dumb kids who enjoy nothing more than pushing buttons just to hear them beep. (And then you come back and wonder why your freezer is set at 60F and your fridge is set at -20F...) In theory, any kid smart enough to figure out the 'unlock keys' button should also be smart enough that you can instruct them to not fuck with the fridge controls.
Why would a "smart" fridge even have an option to not refrigerate?
Only thing I could think of is some sort of 'moving house mode' where it warms back up but dries everything out to prevent mold growth on the coils due to condensation.
That wouldn't help with my gallon of milk 😂
Have the day you paid for!
Did you pay your $4.99 monthly subscription to remove ads from the fridge’s screen?
Almost all "smart devices" just make the product more temperamental and less in your control.
Suck. It. Jin-Yang.
A fridge shouldn't require firmware.
As long as they can play Doom, all good
no food sounds pretty doomy to me
Maybe eventually the moldy food in the back of the fridge will evolve into something complex enough to play Doom on?
"Smart" fridge.
I'm guessing none of these idiots will learn their lesson either. The next appliance they buy will still have network connectivity and useless spyware.
Earn social credit while pouring juice
If it's so "smart" why did it shut down?? "Dumb" fridges only do one thing, cool food. Make the world dumb again.
What idiot thought it would be a good idea to connect the cooling mechanism to whatever smart bullshit screen is built into it?
This is such a 2026 headline…just wow. There is no crying over spoiled [sic] milk
lmao. this happened like two days before one of korea's major holidays.
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 level of incompetence.
I just mentioned elsewhere in this post that I had to buy a new washer/dryer set. Guess what brand I was getting rid of? They came with the house and I was on my 5th or 6th repair of the fucking dryer before I said fuck this, we are selling these before they become paperweights and getting something made by a competent appliance company.
Samsung is awful at software. Samsung phones for some reason insist on replacing Google or even basic Android apps with their own worse versions.
They thought, if we can make phones... Why the fuck not a dishwasher??
Fuck around and Bosch out
I have a PhD in IoT technology uses (mostly medical/clinical monitoring applications). My appliances do not have firmware to update. Don't buy that shit, it's stupid.
We recently had to buy a new washer/dryer. Every single set we looked at had wifi connectivity as a feature, so we did end up buying a set with that, but they will never see the light of my WAN.
"No WiFi" was a hard requirement for my induction range. Surprisingly hard to find.
Seriously? That's bananas
Yeah the one I got had Wi-Fi, I should have known better
What "smart" functions does a range have?
It let's you control it with your phone, gives you alerts, it's stupid, none of this is necessary.
You'd be surprised what kinds of things have firmware (although maybe not, if you work in IoT). A normal dumb fridge, a normal dumb dishwasher, most ovens, and definitely microwaves will have firmware. Even if they have no interface to update it. In some cases, the firmware was written using a chip programmer before the chip was soldered in. But there's still firmware. Any appliance with a clock will have it, because otherwise, you have to implement a clock in a CPLD or discrete logic gates or something. A microcontroller is just cheaper.
Years ago I had to bring 10 tons of gravel to a work site using a wheelbarrow and a shovel. By the end of it my ability to load the wheelbarrow accurately and unload it efficiently was massively improved.
I was the firmware. I got an update.
Right, but that's not firmware to update, which I interpreted as the differentiating factor.
This very much was the point. OTA updates are a fucking robot idea for anything that can burn down a house, crash a car, or keep important things safe (like arthritis or immune therapy drugs that need to be kept cold).
If you think that is bad:
https://blog.kowatek.com/2024/05/04/brain-implants-are-becoming-obsolete-like-old-phones-what-happens-next/
This is literally a black mirror episode. Stop helping these psychopaths build a world only they control.
This is unrelated?
To corporate software decisions negatively impacting people's lives?
That wasn't a software decision, though. It was a hardware one.
Why the fuck would a fridge need to be ‘smart’?
Like what’s the reasoning?
Data collection to use to sell you more of what you buy, determine what you would buy, what makes you buy things
"Convenience"
Low level stuff is it can alert the user if the fridge or freezer door is open. Advanced features would be like being able to see inside your fridge remotely so you dont have to go to check what you need to buy at the grocery store.
Then you get to superfluous functions like displaying family photos, online buying of stuff like filters, logging what you have in the fridge and recommend dishes to make.
And none of those functions should affect the basic function of keeping the interior cool in a good practice scenario following a DFMEA. That function should be in a separate layer that should not be affected by any faulty firmware
it could judge you when you throw away those vegetables you never processed
I can't play Orcs Must Die Unleashed because they turned off support even thought it was a perfectly good single player, AND NOW I CAN'T EVEN HAVE A FRIDGE THAT'S TWO YEARS OLD?!
A boring dystopia.