I spent twenty minutes yesterday trying to reconnect my “smart” air fryer to the Wi-Fi. Why? Because I changed my router password, and apparently, the only way to update it on the fryer is to hold two buttons that don’t exist and pray to the gods of connectivity. It didn’t work. Now it’s just a dumb fryer with a blinking blue LED that mocks me every time I want nuggets.
This is the state of the smart home. Or at least, it was until recently.
If you’ve been following the appliance space this year, you know the big shift that happened a few months back. Samsung decided to slap its One UI interface—the same one on my phone—onto its home appliances. But the kicker wasn’t the interface. It was the promise: seven years of software updates.
Seven. Years.
Let that sink in. My Android phone from three years ago is already begging for mercy, but my washing machine is supposedly going to be getting feature drops until 2032. It’s absurd. It’s ambitious. And honestly? I’m still trying to figure out if it’s actually a good thing or just a marketing stunt that’s going to annoy me in a decade.
The “One UI” Everything Strategy
I’ve had a chance to mess around with the updated interface on the new Bespoke fridge lineup that rolled out earlier in 2025. If you’re used to Samsung phones, it’s jarringly familiar. The icons, the rounded corners, the notification shade—it’s all there.
On one hand, this solves a massive headache: fragmentation. Before this, every appliance felt like it was running a different, half-baked operating system designed by a team that had never met each other. The dishwasher app looked different from the oven app, which looked different from the fridge screen. It was a mess.
Now, it’s consistent.
But here’s the thing that bugs me. Do I need my fridge to have the same UI complexity as my phone? When I’m grabbing milk at 2 AM, I don’t want to navigate a notification center. I just want the light to turn on.
The update brought features like “Quick Share” to appliances, which lets you beam photos to your fridge screen. I tried it once. It worked. Then I asked myself why I needed a photo of my cat on the door of the thing that holds my leftovers. I still don’t have an answer.
The Hardware Trap
Here is my biggest worry, and I’m writing this as someone who has seen too many gadgets die young. Software updates are heavy.
Think about your laptop. When you buy it, it’s snappy. Five years later, after five major OS updates, it’s a sluggish brick that hyperventilates if you open three Chrome tabs.
Laptops have powerful processors. Cooling fans. gigabytes of RAM.
Your washing machine? It has a low-power chip designed to count spin cycles and maybe play a little jingle when it’s done. Samsung says they’re optimizing One UI for these lighter processors (Tizen RT and the like), but I’m skeptical.
In 2029, when “One UI 11” drops with some AI-powered stain detection algorithm, is that poor little chip in my washer going to choke? There is nothing worse than a laggy interface on a touchscreen you only use to press “Start.” If I have to wait three seconds for the “Heavy Duty” button to register because the system is downloading a security patch, I’m going back to analog knobs.
Why Security Actually Matters Here
Okay, I’ve been complaining, but I have to give credit where it’s due. The seven-year promise isn’t really about cool new features. It’s about security. And that is huge.
Nobody talks about this, but old smart appliances are a nightmare. They sit on your network, unpatched, for a decade. They are the perfect entry point for hackers. I remember reading about a casino that got hacked through a smart thermometer in their aquarium a few years back. That’s the reality we live in.
By committing to seven years of updates, Samsung is basically acknowledging that appliances have a longer lifespan than phones. We don’t replace a dryer every two years (unless you buy the cheap ones, I guess). We keep them until they die.
Knowing that my fridge won’t become part of a botnet in 2030 because the manufacturer got bored of supporting it? That’s worth the price of admission. It’s boring, unsexy infrastructure work, but it’s the only reason I’d recommend these “AI-enabled” appliances to my parents.
The Ecosystem Lock-in is Real
Let’s be real for a second—Samsung isn’t doing this out of the kindness of their hearts. They want you trapped.
If your phone, watch, TV, fridge, and oven all run One UI and talk to each other, you are never leaving. You’re stuck. Try buying an LG washer when your entire house is speaking Samsung. It’ll feel like introducing a foreign language speaker into a tight-knit clique.
I noticed this with the “Phone-to-Oven” feature they pushed in the last update. I can see my oven’s camera feed on my Galaxy phone. It’s cool, sure. But it means if I switch to an iPhone next year, I lose that functionality. They are building a walled garden, and they are using my kitchen as the bricks.
So, Should You Care?
If you’re buying appliances right now, at the tail end of 2025, this 7-year support thing should probably be on your checklist. Not because you want new features in 2031, but because you want the thing to keep working safely.
But don’t expect miracles.
I’ve seen how software companies operate. “Support” can mean a lot of things. In year six, “support” might just mean “we made sure it doesn’t catch fire” rather than “here are cool new UI tricks.” And honestly? That’s fine.
I just hope the touchscreens hold up. Because if the screen dies in year four, it doesn’t matter how good the software is—you still can’t do your laundry.
Side note: If anyone knows how to reset a 2022-era smart fryer without a hammer, let me know. I miss my nuggets.
