Shocked owners found themselves suddenly feeling stupid.
It knows what you are eating, it knows when you’re awake.
Those are the apparent benefits of new Samsung smart fridges, which look more like gigantic phone screens than they do refrigerators.
“Being able to glance at what’s inside right from the screen or my phone…”
With a 32-inch display and the ability to tell homeowners what is inside their fridge, the Samsung fridges offer endless technological capabilities seldom seen in something that is simply supposed to keep food cold.
However, with a six-foot-tall smart device comes the need for internet connectivity and, of course, mandatory updates.
When users went to open their smart fridges last week just before a holiday, they noticed they had suddenly lost power and stopped functioning.
Reports indicate that dozens of fridge owners saw blank screens after an update or text that read “Checking SmartThings app during update,” or “offline.”
Standard refrigerator owners are used to seeing nothing on their appliance doors; for smart fridge owners, however, the lack of an operating system display and absent LED lights meant their fridges weren’t powered and weren’t keeping their food cold.
To make matters worse, in some cases all cold air had escaped the fridges completely.
The affected products predominantly included Samsung Bespoke AI 4-Door refrigerators released in 2024 or later.
These fridges use artificial intelligence to monitor contents, track expiry dates, and suggest recipes for the user. This is made possible through internal cameras that work with Google Gemini and an “AI Food Manager.”
One review stated: “Item tracking saves serious time and cuts down on forgotten, expired groceries.”
“Being able to glance at what’s inside right from the screen or my phone makes meal planning seamless,” the review added.
The gigantic display screen also allows users to watch videos or listen to music from the refrigerator. Another user reported they like to use the fridge screen to monitor their security cameras.
When some users reached out to Samsung for emergency repairs, some were allegedly told that “employees have left for the day, making immediate action impossible.”
Further consumer reports indicated there was no mention of activating an emergency response team, even though inquiries had led customers to be told an engineer visit was required.
Samsung has since responded that it had “activated an emergency response protocol and its service centers are taking immediate action to address this issue.”
The problem affected only South Korea, with no impact on overseas markets.
Samsung stated the incident occurred on September 22nd afternoon due to an error during internal testing related to a refrigerator software update. Samsung immediately suspended the testing upon receiving reports of the issue.
The incident happened just before South Korea’s Chuseok holiday break, which was celebrated September 24-26 this year.
