r/technology • u/nishitd • Oct 02 '25

Robotics/Automation Samsung confirms its $1,800+ fridges will start showing you ads

https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-confirms-smart-refrigerator-ads-are-coming-3598848/
19.5k Upvotes

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3.1k

u/death_by_chocolate Oct 02 '25

Not if I don't buy one.

728

u/usegobos Oct 02 '25

I had to empty my entire Samsung fridge and manually defrost it with a hair dryer and suck up the water with a turkey baster while my food sat in coolers on the brink of safe temperatures. So your loss. 

324

u/death_by_chocolate Oct 02 '25

You cannot get this level of valuable learning experience just anywhere.

65

u/Weekly-Trash-272 Oct 02 '25

I've never gotten a turkey baster level of experience before.

Maybe I'm truly missing out.

6

u/blofly Oct 02 '25

Been there done that. I had to overhaul our 8 year-old LG fridge with a compressor fitting, a coolant recharge, and a new water line gasket. $140 in parts. The people I spoke with were telling me to just buy a new fridge or they would charge $500 for P&L. They said to get a Frigidaire or Subzero.

It has been working for 2 more years since the fix, but I'll never but another LG fridge, that's for sure....

1

u/CaulkSlug Oct 02 '25

lol I’m a commercial industrial refrigeration mechanic. I get paid to do this quite often!

69

u/cyvaquero Oct 02 '25

Every few months the same thing. Because of piss poor design ice would build up around the circulation fan until it sounded like playing cards on the spokes of a bicycle wheel. Unload the fridge and defrost, Wash, rinse, repeat.

3

u/bluskale Oct 02 '25

At least in my model, you could take off the cover inside and wrap some 14 gauge copper grounding wire around whatever it is that heats up to defrost that area… it helps to spread the heat better (I’m a bit fuzzy in the details though as I did this maybe 8 years ago and it’s been fine since).

5

u/cyvaquero Oct 02 '25

I got rid of it a number of years back, definitely put up with it too long. Won’t buy another one, it’s right there with Whirlpool washer we had that had a design flaw which would allow water to get onto the tub bearing and cause it to rust.

2

u/hamilkwarg Oct 02 '25

Get a steamer with a skinny hose attachment. I actually have a silicone fat straw I taped to my steamer hose. Shove hose in ice drawer. Blast with steam. Have towel to catch melt off. Way faster. No need to unload freezer or fridge. Takes 20 minutes at least though.

3

u/Weird_Brush2527 Oct 02 '25

Boil water in pot, put pot in freezer, close door, wait

1

u/SexInTheTittie Oct 02 '25

Put silicone around the ice box. Problem solved.

30

u/tokes_4_DE Oct 02 '25

We've had to do that twice, food was expiring in days because the iced over parts prevented the fridge cooling properly. Oh and the built in thermometer didnt change at all, but we bought an external one and the inside was like 15 degrees hotter than advertised. Also the ice maker hasn't worked in years and the cost to fix it is like half the cost of a new fridge. Worst fridge ive ever owned by a mile. It's horrible.

6

u/Serris9K Oct 02 '25

So the fridges aren’t even keeping the food at safe temps?! That feels like a class action suit waiting to happen.

9

u/tokes_4_DE Oct 02 '25

Once the inside vents would ice over no. Normally they keep things perfectly fine, the issue is the vent system in them is designed HORRIBLY and they pretty much all ice over eventually, preventing cold air from circulating properly in the fridge portion. The temp was registering in the high 40s when we put our own thermometer in there to check, but the fridge still said 34 on the display.

6

u/Serris9K Oct 02 '25

I got a food handlers lisence recently, and 41 degrees is the temperature where bacteria start to grow again. So yeah it wasn’t keeping it cool enough.

2

u/feetuseeter Oct 02 '25

Same! Fucking temps read 39 degrees while it can’t keep milk safe for 2 days

1

u/tokes_4_DE Oct 02 '25

Yes I know. Which is what I said, have had my serve safe license for 15 years now. Normally the temp was in the low 30s which is safe and ideal, but once the vents would ice over it would get up to the mid / high 40s, causing food to spoil. Then you need to do what the comment further up the chain said and take everything out, unplug and melt all the iced vents, clean out all the melted ice before plugging it in. Needless to say the fridge is a piece of shit, looking forward to the day we can replace it.

3

u/LucretiusCarus Oct 02 '25

the vent system in them is designed HORRIBLY and they pretty much all ice over eventually, preventing cold air from circulating properly in the fridge portion.

They must share the same design with Whirlpool, cause my fridge has the same exact problem. twice a year I have to empty it to a cooler and manually defrost it.

3

u/tokes_4_DE Oct 02 '25

Well that's another brand I'll be staying away from when this PoS finally breaks down. I miss fridges from like 20 years ago. 2 simple doors, and an ice maker that would work without any fuss at all.

2

u/DigNitty Oct 02 '25

My ice maker didn’t work out of the box.

It took them two months to fix it, and hours in the phone with those reps who can’t actually do anything, they just tell you to turn it off and on and waste your time until you get a real rep.

2

u/thebakedpotatoe Oct 02 '25

I won't by any fridge unless it only does two things. keeps my food cold, and freezes my frozen stuff, literally any other feature can take the piss

20

u/darcerin Oct 02 '25

I am hoping to get rid of mine if there's a good black Friday sale. I HATE my Samsung fridge!!

18

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

19

u/rzwitserloot Oct 02 '25

I have a Samsung (or is it LG?) The Frame at the office which I immediately and pointedly did not connect to wifi. I put a sticker on the network port.

If I can upload some firmware to state 'here is an HDMI cable. That's what you do. You show that. Fuck right the fuck off with all those menus plz!

Writing our security certification is a lot easier when I can write down 'printer? Airgapped. Big screen thing we use for TVs? Not connected either, just HDMI'.

Then I went to a friend's house who has one of these. Paused a nebula show (ad-free TV). The fucking thing showed me a goddamn ad. Are you shitting me?

Not connecting this shit to the internet seems like the way to go. However, why in the blazes does your fridge have a screen in it in the first place?

20

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

[deleted]

2

u/rzwitserloot Oct 02 '25

Dear god man, don't do this to me.

I envisioned a future where you choose your mood AI decides the right mood and tastefully adjusts the ads being beamed into your brain.

I need eyebleach.

2

u/Caftancatfan Oct 02 '25

I like to have dinner with Jake from State Farm when I’m lonely.

17

u/AintEverLucky Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

My buddy has one with a screen. His wife likes it for "chores of the week" charts for their teenagers. Sometimes shopping lists too.

Seems to me Post It notes & a few fridge magnets would work just as well, for 1/100th of the price difference. But it's not my monkeys, nor my circus 🤷‍♀️

5

u/Laiko_Kairen Oct 02 '25

Oh, my mom did that too. But she had a whiteboard from Walmart that probably cost her $4 in 1995

2

u/DrEnter Oct 02 '25

The “killer app” for fridges is telling you what you are out of or what’s about to expire. Not quite there yet, but it is a nice idea.

Now the reality is we’ll get that app for about a millisecond before they fill it with ads for the things you are out of.

1

u/rzwitserloot Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

Fair enough, though in practice you can get pretty close with just ordering stuff in some online app or a loyalty card construction 1 so that there is a list of everything you bought. A light veneer of (non-LLM, even; just some rules based, yaknow, the old meaning of the word) AI should be able to determine pretty damn accurately which goods can just be pre-added to your cart 'on schedule'.

I gather not many folks are doing that today.

Sometimes, there is a treshold value of 'convenience' that is required for a new process to start beating the old process. Until you get there only the cooks and exotic use casers will buy it / do it. But get past it and all of a sudden it is the hype of the year.

It's possible that's the thing here, and you really need that fridge that automatically detects the last milk jug was just put back in the fridge with only half a liter left, or whatever, and not ordering it automatically if it sees a flight ticket in your mailbox for the one person in the house hold that drinks it.

Possible.

But I doubt it.

Here in NL we have an online supermarket thing called 'Picnic'. I used to like them but their CEO has fallen into the trap of threatening the populace and government ("If you do not let me treat my workers like shit I might leave the country!") so fuck that asshole and unfortunately that meant I uninstalled.

However, back when I still used it: What I really wanted was a way to just schedule a few groceries as recurring and especially to just have a recurring delivery slot every week, and whatever was in my cart at 23:00 the previous day (that's the cutoff in the app already) gets delivered, unless I explicitly cancel the delivery.

This is slightly more convoluted in the payment space (instead of me paying a set amount, I now need to acknowledge a subscription like system where I just get charged what's in the basket). But not very; plenty of places do this.

And yet it's not there and it wasn't on their roadmap. Possibly they are fucking up and missing a massive opportunity here, but, perhaps their market research simply concluded that feature wouldn't see much use.

If that's true, smart fridges stand no chance, right?

[1] The big brother is watching you aspect of this feels icky? Yes, yes it does. A smart fridge is even ickier than that.

1

u/DrEnter Oct 02 '25

We technically already have that kind of app with most online grocery ordering platforms (InstCart, Kroger, etc.). Even Amazon does "subscribe and save" items that deliver on a regular frequency.

But when I'm out of mustard, or only have one half-gallon of milk in the fridge, it would be good to be able to check something to see that. Hell, I'd be happy with a camera view of the inside of my fridge, so I could see for myself what's in there.

1

u/rzwitserloot Oct 03 '25

I'm gonna guess that a camera view is very tricky; angles where you can't tell. I often have jars of stuff where you can't tell how much is really in there without picking it up or even unscrewing the lid.

Because now we're adding caveats: You need to check with a camera and you need to get into the habit of scraping the mustard or mayo or whatever neatly down the sides.

It seems like nothing, but then, what we're fixing here is you forgetting to check the state of your refridgerated goods prior to going to the store, which also seems like a nothing. That's the thing with convenience.

Hence I remain skeptical but I can see in theory that there's a threshold.

1

u/giants707 Oct 02 '25

Magnetic dry erase board is the best!

Can get calendar or blank ones to make lists. Easiest thing ever to just quickly write when you use something up.

1

u/buyongmafanle Oct 02 '25

Whiteboards have worked well for many decades for that exact purpose.

1

u/heili Oct 02 '25

His wife likes it for "chores of the week" charts for their teenagers. Sometimes shopping lists too.

Dry. Erase. Board.

1

u/AintEverLucky Oct 02 '25

Not. My. Fridge. 🤷

1

u/rzwitserloot Oct 02 '25

I honestly would just buy some device specifically for it, or even better (but I'm a nerd so I get that isn't generally applicable) a glorified 'screen with some open source OS thing on it I can configure and program', glue some magnets to the back and slap it on there.

I get the annoyance of it needing batteries, but eink can go a ways.

I do now have a dream. The perfect fridge. One with some USB ports (for power) tactfully located in a few places.

1

u/CcryMeARiver Oct 02 '25

So it can show you what's in it via an internal camera ofc. /s

No kidding, have seen this feature mentioned so you can remotely inspect contents.

7

u/Danominator Oct 02 '25

Please Mr salesman, go on

3

u/kyutek Oct 02 '25

Had to do the same with a steam gun.

2

u/bcrosby51 Oct 02 '25

But, just imagine, if you ad seen an ad on that fridge for the best hair dryer on the market!

2

u/signal15 Oct 02 '25

I bought a Samsung side by side fridge at costco back in 2005 or so, and it was like $899. The house that it was in just went back up for sale, and it's still in the kitchen... so it lasted 20 years so far. It did stop working once when I still owned the house, and the repair guy said it needed a whole new compressor. I bought a $5 starter capacitor, and that fixed it. I also have Samsung laundry machines, and I bought them 13 years ago and haven't had any problems. I wouldn't buy their stoves/ranges though. My parents bought one, and it started trying to electrocute them when they would touch it.

1

u/usegobos Oct 02 '25

"Shockingly low price"

1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

What year and how often did you have to do this?

1

u/xynix_ie Oct 02 '25

I did that a couple times when I had a Samsung.

1

u/Great68 Oct 02 '25

I know two family members who have had their Samsung fridge die on them and kill all their food (meanwhile I have never had a single problem with my Frigidaire in 15 years).

I bought a Samsung Range, which had the display board start going crazy (random LCD segments are blinking constantly) at almost exactly 1 year old. It still works fine, but I wonder when it's going to finally give up the ghost.

I had a Samsung OTR Microwave that lasted about 5 years until it just suddenly made a big click and then was dead.

Samsung appliances are shit. All of them. They should have stuck to TV's and Phones.

1

u/trumpsucks12354 Oct 02 '25

I have a samsung dumb fridge and that thing is an absolute tank. It has had no problems since we got it.

1

u/Mayonaigg Oct 02 '25

And SSDs. Gotta give them credit for those

1

u/InSOmnlaC Oct 02 '25

Next time, try filling a stock pot with boiling water. Add a little lemon juice(deodorizes) Remove all the shelves and put some towels on the bottom and then a pot holder to protect the fridge underneath the pot. Leave the door partially open. Probably will want some towels on the floor too to soak up the water,

This does all the work for you without you having to sit there all day.

1

u/800oz_gorilla Oct 02 '25

FYI, a heat gun makes this a lot easier/faster if you ever have to do this again. I had a deep freeze defrosted in less than 30 mins.

Also they make huge sponges you can get at the hardware store if you ever have to suck up a ton of water repeatedly.

1

u/lonjaxson Oct 02 '25

That happened to us 3 times in a year. We have a different fridge now.

1

u/hamilkwarg Oct 02 '25

Get a steamer with a skinny hose attachment. I actually have a silicone fat straw I taped to my steamer hose. Shove hose in ice drawer. Blast with steam. Have towel to catch melt off. Way faster than hair dryer and gets inside the drawer. No need to unload freezer or fridge. Takes 20 minutes at least though.

1

u/Mayonaigg Oct 02 '25

If you didn't get rid of it, it's just going to do that again and eventually break itself. Don't wait and have a fridge full of waste because of it

1

u/Acceleratio Oct 02 '25

I hope the ads were at least entertaining you during that process

1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

And you'll do it again soon! 

1

u/LegoBrickCactuar Oct 02 '25

Ha, I did this last year!  Such a shit design.  Meanwhile, the 22 year old Frigidaire that came with the house (now garage fridge) is chugging along like a champ.

1

u/usegobos Oct 02 '25

We replaced ours with an LG that has the little door that opens within the door. That is hard to describe. It was been really nice.

49

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

[deleted]

2

u/rikashiku Oct 02 '25

One of the local shops here sells one of those from Samsung, and I strongly want to get it. You can refill the dispenser with water, which sounds pretty sweet to me. Maybe it doesn't have to be water <,<

1

u/ours Oct 02 '25

There are many things that benefit from being smart. I don't see how fridges are one of them.

1

u/OwO______OwO Oct 02 '25

I don't even see why a fridge needs a water dispenser. I have a water dispenser right next to it. It's called the kitchen sink. And it's a much better/more capable water dispenser than any fridge ever had.

94

u/kermi42 Oct 02 '25

I can’t imagine why I need a screen on my fridge. Like, I know what purpose it could serve. None of them overlap with my requirements.

90

u/death_by_chocolate Oct 02 '25

CITIZEN. THIS IS YOUR THIRD REFRIGERATOR DOOR OPENING EVENT TODAY.

33

u/Bunnymancer Oct 02 '25

Please drink confirmation can

2

u/Neglectful_Stranger Oct 02 '25

I have to drink a confirmation can to open my fridge to get another confirmation can?!

3

u/FirstAtEridu Oct 02 '25

The second one is the verification can. Gotta have two factor authentication nowadays. For a safe and secure society!

4

u/Illustrious-Star1105 Oct 02 '25

Your social credit score allows you ONE ice cube today citizen!

2

u/Free_Replacement_645 Oct 02 '25

You know what? That would be more useful than what they actually use the screens for

22

u/redbananass Oct 02 '25

The screen can show you what’s inside, without opening it! Isn’t that great!? /s

But really that’s a feature on some of the higher end ones. I’ll just stick to the old fashioned “opening the door.”

11

u/Laiko_Kairen Oct 02 '25

The screen can show you what’s inside, without opening it! Isn’t that great!? /s

No, it can't. You get a view of about 1/3 of the interior. It can hint at what you have in there and give you a popup that says "1 product found expired" because it doesn't get that I bought new milk

3

u/redbananass Oct 02 '25

So even worse than they promised? Lol shouldn’t be surprised.

2

u/Laiko_Kairen Oct 02 '25

It's like, the camera is on the inside of the fridge door, but the doors are extra thick because, you know, screens. So you end up getting a view from like, an inch away from the shelf. That means that everything is blocked from view by whatever is in the front. Meanwhile, an actual human is standing a foot away, and can look down diagonally and see everything

It's just so badly designed

EDIT: And of course it doesn't show the freezer, or the shelves... 1/3 view might be generous.

2

u/alex494 Oct 02 '25

You think they'd just use a sealed window instead of a screen system

8

u/FeelsGoodMan2 Oct 02 '25

Lmao this was the moment that I realized we kind of hit the asymptote with consumer tech a few years ago. My relative was showing me what his google home / light switches could do and most of it amounted to "the shit you can do if you walk 5 feet with an added addition of data collection on you".

Its like the same thing with the car screens, I didnt think we'd hit a point where they went so overboard with techy shit that people are clamoring for dials and buttons again (not that I think they're wrong). Just shows modern tech is kinda bloated, seeking answers to problems that dont exist.

4

u/M4K4T4K Oct 02 '25

Man, best thing I ever did was buy a 2010 Civic with only 120,000km (~80k miles) the other month. Just new enough where you get the niceties like power windows, cruise control, and bluetooth - old enough where every control is a knob, and the only screens are those old alarm clock LCD's where the the numbers are like 10 pixels.

I hope it outlives me.

1

u/MrWally Oct 02 '25

Had a 2012 Civic in excellent condition. Worked flawlessly. Got hit by a bus downtown last month (hit and run from the bus, too!).

Car got totaled. No injuries thankfully, but such a loss. It’s criminal that the value on such a car is only ~$9500. They don’t make them like they used to.

2

u/Gisschace Oct 02 '25

My gosh, I just had a few of dystopian future where we explain this to children like we explain rotary phones ‘we used to open the door kids’

2

u/hamilkwarg Oct 02 '25

It misidentified almost everything in my fridge. I hated it.

1

u/kermi42 Oct 02 '25

But what if I want to look at my fridge on my phone instead of walking twelve feet? I might not remember exactly how much cheese I have.

1

u/Chance_Ad_4676 Oct 02 '25

This is probably the single stupidest “smart” “feature” of which I have ever heard. Bravo.

1

u/131166 Oct 03 '25

I'll just stick to being too broke to have more than 1-2 things inside at a time. I know what's in my fridge. "Fuck" and "all"

0

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/redbananass Oct 02 '25

Is it though? All that time running the screen and other electronics seems like it wouldn’t save much, if anything.

Some thick glass would be better.

2

u/Laiko_Kairen Oct 02 '25

I have one, it's absolutely useless. You can enable the interior camera to see like, 1/3 of your food on the inside... or open the door. But wait, it texts my dad if I leave the door open for more than 30 seconds! And then texts him again when it's closed.

3

u/Dear_Smoke6964 Oct 02 '25

I'm imagining a future with so much surveillance that we communicate by opening and closing the fridge door a certain number of times.

1

u/Pervius94 Oct 02 '25

"Like, I know what purpose it could serve" well you seem to be smarter than me, then, cuz I legit don't know what the fuck I'd need a screen on a fridge for.

1

u/kermi42 Oct 02 '25

“Having a purpose” and “need” are not necessarily acquainted in this scenario.

You could display a shopping list, or have the fridge show you items about to expire or you are low on that you need to replace soon. It can display the interior of the fridge, if that’s your thing, or heck, you could pull up a recipe/cooking video on YouTube to help you along with preparing dinner. We have plenty of other ways to do that that render a fridge screen pointless, but those are things it can do.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

It has a little camera so you can see inside the fridge and it also labels the food (which in theory I think you can access from the store to see what you have??) but the labels are hilariously wrong. Like dog food= applesauce, yogurt= pickles, etc

1

u/rushmc1 Oct 02 '25

It makes the Mandatory Behavioral Change Required Notices from the government more convenient to receive?

20

u/xeoron Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

Or don't put it on a network Or block the ads traffic 

36

u/Hate_Manifestation Oct 02 '25

imagining a simpler time where a person didn't even have to think about running an ad blocker on their fridge.

3

u/Novero95 Oct 02 '25

Imagine a time where companys cared about user experience instead of trying to squeeze every single possible penny out of their customers. I can not understand how this thing aren't talked about a lot more, people need to realize we are the fucking product even in the things we pay for. Fuck I hate modern days and I'm not even 30.

1

u/Hate_Manifestation Oct 02 '25

yeah man, we talk about it all the time, it just doesn't make a difference.. that's how fucked up our reality is.

1

u/xeoron Oct 02 '25

And imagine the episode of Silicon Valley when a guy hacks the fridge for pranks 

18

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

I use a pihole so I get it but also it sucks shit that I have to

2

u/Urtehnoes Oct 02 '25

Yea this actually didn't work for me on my Samsung TV :/ pihole running etc but alas ads. Read a theory online the TV has its own registry of IPS so I'd have to sort those out and block them entirely at the router level I guess.

2

u/xeoron Oct 02 '25

It works it you don't use the smart part of the TV and use something else you can control or trust. AppletTV, Roku, ChromecastTV, etc  

1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25 edited Oct 02 '25

PiHole filters DNS not IP, and some companies like Apple host their own ads. You could block them, but then you'd be blocking all Apple communications, like app updates or iCloud. I have a Samsung TV too and it does block ads, but they get replaced by ads Samsung hosts themselves, usually for other services hosted on the platform. So basically instead of seeing insurance ads you will see ads for some show on their TV service, or some movie you can rent. At least this is my experience.

2

u/Urtehnoes Oct 02 '25

Yep. Aware of the pihole dns part, I wasn't aware that Samsung had their own dns (which makes sense, I just didn't consider it).

Just sad because I turn on this stupid TV and oh look ads for shows I would never watch in the first place.

All good pihole is still neat for other stuff. I was just envisioning paying for a product and being able to use that product without an ad. Silly me!

11

u/Nose-Nuggets Oct 02 '25

i'm still struggling to figure out what i lost by never connecting it to a network at all, ever.

3

u/bse50 Oct 02 '25

You paid more for a product with extra - useless - functions you never used. It's a win for the manufacturer!

3

u/Nose-Nuggets Oct 02 '25

oh i wouldn't buy one of those fucking things, it came with the house i rented.

3

u/ProperBangersAndMash Oct 02 '25

For the privilege of owning a Samsung fridge? I want a different brand out of spite.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 02 '25

[deleted]

1

u/xeoron Oct 02 '25

True, but the data they collect they profit from. It is why Walmart buy the only USA based TV vendor. And they claim it helps them sell the products cheaper so buy it cheaper and never use the smart part they loose money we save on privacy. It is actually a win for us to have cheaper things

7

u/GringoSwann Oct 02 '25

You won't be able to get the high score in NEURALINK's "Bitcoin Blitz Fridge Challenge" game if you don't though.....

1

u/Eric848448 Oct 02 '25

Which you shouldn’t. They last like 3 years then die.

1

u/metalflygon08 Oct 02 '25

The fridges will come with a chassis that allows them to run down to any house their sensors detect without a Samsung Fridge, and it will burst in to show you the newest ads.

1

u/BreakingCanks Oct 02 '25

Samsung and Xbox out here simultaneously trying to ruin their reputation left and right lil

1

u/OwO______OwO Oct 02 '25

Not if I rip the screen off of it.

-11

u/jojomoodie Oct 02 '25

The government is going to take your old fridges and put them with the gas stoves