| ▲ | sandworm101 2 hours ago |
| The fridge compressor answers to software? Idiocy. It need be nothing more than a relay attached to a thermocouple. I can see having a smart screen to deliver aps/ads and to collect data on people in the home, but why on earth would that need to actually manipulate temperatures? |
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| ▲ | Grombobulous an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone. That’s why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t? I find that the anti-smart device brigade among tech enthusiasts is very detached from the reality of what consumers want. The general public does demand smart features and they want them to work well. The sin here isn’t that the fridge is smart, the sin is that bad software was pushed out. My particular refrigerator also has a purposefully limited set of features. You’ll notice that real luxury brands like Sub-Zero don’t pack their refrigerators with crazy feature lists and touch screens. Their smart apps are basic and focus on essentials like “door left open” or “change filter” notifications and remote temperature adjustment. They don’t have complicated features like craft cocktail ice and even basic stuff like water dispensing is an optional extra (since it’s assumed that luxury clients may have a separate dedicated reverse osmosis and sparkling water machine for that). They don’t push out frequent updates and they keep their smart functions as modular components since it’s assumed that the refrigerator will remain installed permanently for decades (e.g., you can add a newer control system with touch screen and WiFi to your older Sub-Zero fridge). It would be nice if non-luxury brands followed some of these philosophies a little more. |
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| ▲ | CWuestefeld an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | My non-Samsung fridge lets me change the temperature settings from my phone. That’s why the compressor answers to software. How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t? I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic, so I'll bite: why on Earth would you ever want to change the temperature settings of your fridge? | |
| ▲ | cesarb an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > How else would I change the temperature remotely if it didn‘t? ...why do you need to change the fridge temperature remotely? | | |
| ▲ | Grombobulous an hour ago | parent [-] | | I paid $11,000 for my luxury built-in refrigerator, I expect that functionality to exist since it’s trivial to implement. I could implement that in a weekend on an ESP board. | | |
| ▲ | crtasm 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | When you had an offline fridge did you ever find yourself in a situation where remotely setting the temperature would have been useful? |
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| ▲ | chii 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Fridge sellers dont want their product to be seen as commodities, because they can't charge a high margin on those type of products. |
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| ▲ | hylaride 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In 2006 shortly after I bought my (first and still only) home, I bought the cheapest Kenmore fridge from Sears (~$600 at the time) as the one that came with the house failed soon after moving in - it was probably 26 years old with metal grill shelves. I was stretched for money for a bit due to dealing with closing costs, etc. I figured it'd last 5-10 years and I'd just get a new, "better" one when my cashflow wasn't acutely tight. Despite having since remodelled the kitchen (again spending more than expected as one does when renovating), I kept the fridge...it's still working fine 20 years later, though the plastic drawers are starting to degrade. Next to higher-end German appliances it looks a bit well worn and out of place in an otherwise very nicely renovated kitchen, which my wife and I semi-seriously joke gives the place character. Every once in awhile I'll wander through an appliance aisle and sigh. Similar fridges feel cheap and are much more expensive. In fancy fridges, I just see more components that'd fail. I'll I really want is a freezer and a fridge. I want need an ice maker (especially after learning how gross they can get). Ideally I'd have a standard old-fashioned sized fridge that had a good separate temperature control for the freezer and is common enough that I can get replacement parts 20 years from now. The kicker was I now realize the old 26 year old fridge probably just needed a coolant top up. Maybe that wasn't possible as I'm not sure when freon was banned and if it would have been possible to do that. | | |
| ▲ | f6v 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Old fridges last over two decades. I don't think that Samsung and others want these to last as long. |
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| ▲ | gedy 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I guess the sellers and industries should have thought of this when they offloaded manufacturing to cheap countries that can and will undercut them. | | |
| ▲ | pjc50 43 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Samsung fridges are made in Korea. i.e. not outsourced. They're just very bad at software. | | |
| ▲ | boelboel 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Most non high-end samsung fridges aren't built in Korea, lower-end fridges are made in Vietnam and midrange fridges are made in China or Thailand. Regardless of Samsung outsourcing they still have to compete with outsourcing firms. There's only so much demand for fridges, 100-200 million fridges a year worldwide, and most of the consumer fridges end up primarily competing on price. |
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| ▲ | vlovich123 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Because the temperature is adjusted and they want to be able to display the current temperature as well as the target on said display? And once you’ve done that, your bean counters will pressure you to shave the BOM. Not saying it’s smart, just laying out a plausible sequence of events on how they reached that decision |
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| ▲ | avian 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > they want to be able to display the current temperature Do they really? When replacing my 20 year old fridge (that had an actual mechanical temperature gauge) with a new one I specifically bought one that had a (now digital, of course) display for the current temperature. It turned out that the temperature display is completely faked. It always shows exactly the set temperature, from the moment you power it on. I guess because of (actual or imagined) customers complaining why their fridge shows e.g. 7°C when they set it to 4°C. Incidentally, my new smart AC does exactly the same thing. Subjectively it's worse than the old one at keeping the place not too cold and not too warm, but it makes damn sure to never show the actual measured temperature anywhere. Everything is getting dumber. | | |
| ▲ | sandworm101 an hour ago | parent [-] | | It probably has more to do with consumer fridges being a bang-bang controller situation where temperature will always fluctuate several degrees either side of the desired number. |
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| ▲ | account42 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Does a relay with a thermocouple get you the cycles required for no-frost features? I agree that there should be adequate safeguards at every turn but its not like computerized control of fridge temperature doesn't make sense. |
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| ▲ | Hizonner 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| A thermocouple won't drive a relay. |
