Koreans Left With Spoiled Food Due To Borked Samsung Firmware Update For ‘Smart’ Fridges

A marketing image for Samsung’s Bespoke AI refrigerators. Credit: Samsung

I must be getting old, because the concept around most IoT injections into otherwise perfectly usable home devices has me wanting to get all these smart-devices off of my lawn. Call me a luddite if you like, but I just don’t think my toothbrush needs to be connected to the internet.

And if you ask me how smart my refrigerator needs to be, my answer would be that it needs to be as precisely smart as required to keep my food cold. But if you’re Samsung, the fridge needs to be connected to the internet, potentially expose your personal information to the wider internet, and show you ads on a fancy screen on the fridge door. This is all done in the name of achieving… something? What that something is, and why it would be of use to me, is a mystery of Sherlockian proportions.

But because of that internet connection, sometimes Samsung “smart” fridges can’t even keep the damned food from spoiling.

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.

Affected fridges “suddenly lost power and stopped functioning immediately after” trying to issue a firmware update through SmartThings, Samsung’s smart home platform, per Star News Korea. The SmartThings app then showed the devices as offline. Some users said that their fridge’s internal display was stuck showing the message “Checking SmartThings app during update.”

Ah, the old “the firmware update spoiled my food” scenario. Samsung was quick to point out that this had only occurred in Korea, which I imagine was lukewarm comfort to the Koreans who suddenly found a fridge filled with spoiled food. It has also failed to detail exactly why this occurred and what it is doing to prevent it in Korea, or any other market for that matter.

And this was particularly troublesome as all of this spoiled food came to be just as the Korean holiday for the autumn harvest was being celebrated.

“Customers only trusted Samsung Electronics and made an official update, but it is so absurd and embarrassing that they can’t even use refrigeration and refrigeration functions before the Chuseok,” a forum user wrote, per a Google-provided translation.

Some Samsung forum users said support agents initially told them that there are limited technicians and executives available, and a repair person might not be available until October.

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“The customers who bought Samsung refrigerators have had their holidays completely ruined, while those Samsung employees are just having a good time at home,” a Samsung forum member wrote.

So the question now is precisely on what grounds does Samsung get to call its fridges “smart” if they’re designed such that their primary function can’t be enjoyed for a month or so because someone at the company had, to borrow a phrase from Jurassic Park, butter fingers?

Filed Under: firmware update, iot, smart fridge, south korea, spoiled food

Companies: samsung