I own one Samsung product, a very expensive fridge freezer, and it's been garbage since the day I bought it. I'll never buy a Samsung product again.
Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
91–100 of 580 posts
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Few things over the past few years have infuriated me as much as tracking and advertising being introduced at the OS level, especially on TVs. I'm looking at you, LG! I will gladly pay more for a TV that doesn't try to advertise Roku's streaming service to me or track my kids' watch history. Seems like they are few and far between, though. The best thing we have been able to come up with is leaving the TV itself disc…
> I will gladly pay more for a TV that doesn't try to advertise Roku's streaming service to me or track my kids' watch history. Seems like they are few and far between, though. Plug in an Apple TV?
This just swaps one locked-down company for another. You're still at the mercy of a giant corp, and worse it's unlikely to work well with my linux laptop and Android phone whereas at least Samsung tries (and often fails). A better solution is needed. I buy Sceptre TVs when I can, though for a "big screen" there aren't great options.
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#93Two important features I insist on for products I develop: 1. Staged rollout of firmware updates. It’s common practice for apps and software but for some reason it’s less common with firmware. Rolling out to 1% (or less, depending on scale) of devices and waiting a day is cheap insurance. Side note: Build a good relationship with customer service people so you hear about these things immediately. 2. A failsafe firmwa…
Great points! As an addendum to this, if #2 becomes untenable for whatever reason (such as a vulnerability in the factory firmware image), then this #3 would be good to strive for as well: 3. have a set of conditions to mark the running firmware image as "safe" and have it become the new fallback firmware image for this scenario. That way you can have a recently up-to-date firmware version constantly trailing the new…
IMO this is a terrible idea for many reasons but the most important of which is: As a consumer I should have the right to have my device revert any b.s. update and get my setup to how it was the day I bought it.
So many companies have begun rolling out updates that makes the device I purchased call home before allowing any user functions and if/when that server goes down my device becomes a brick. This behavior essentially invalidates my ownership of the product and renders it to a service, provided at will by the manufacturer.
Your idea ensures my device will one day become a brick as soon as the manufacturer decides to mark their update requiring internet check-ins “safe”.
If you think I’m exaggerating check out Louis Rossmann‘s YouTube channel.
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#94Two important features I insist on for products I develop: 1. Staged rollout of firmware updates. It’s common practice for apps and software but for some reason it’s less common with firmware. Rolling out to 1% (or less, depending on scale) of devices and waiting a day is cheap insurance. Side note: Build a good relationship with customer service people so you hear about these things immediately. 2. A failsafe firmwa…
> A failsafe firmware reset back to factory state.
This doesn't work if your threat model includes denying rollbacks to prevent exploiting bugs in old firmware. I'd love to be able to roll-back firmware on some of my devices to allow me to "jailbreak" them using old firmware.
In some cases your newer firmware may be blowing e-fuses that prevent old firmware from functioning. See the Nintendo Switch, for an example.
To be clear: I think this is anti-consumer and wrong, but manufacturers absolutely do it.
Edit: I also think it should be illegal, by way of consumer regulation. I don't think consumers should have option to waive their right to manufacturers not damaging hardware they own.
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed a golden factory firmware version that will be booted automatically if all else fails and that provides minimum connectivity is crucial.
I wonder if that opens a threat vector from a security point of view? If an attacker knows that the golden firmware has some critical vulnerability which they can exploit easily, they can activate it at will by bricking the device and waiting for it to restart.
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Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#96Two important features I insist on for products I develop: 1. Staged rollout of firmware updates. It’s common practice for apps and software but for some reason it’s less common with firmware. Rolling out to 1% (or less, depending on scale) of devices and waiting a day is cheap insurance. Side note: Build a good relationship with customer service people so you hear about these things immediately. 2. A failsafe firmwa…
> 1. Staged rollout of firmware update
Especially if there is an internal testing stage before actually rolling out to production. It's possible that the users seeing the bricked devices are in fact limited to the initial wave, but the damage is already done.
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#97Do you guys miss owning things and they were just...yours? Like, you paid money for them and then you had them and you had full control over them and someone half a world away wasn't able to reach into your house and break them or make them do evil things?
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#98Two important features I insist on for products I develop: 1. Staged rollout of firmware updates. It’s common practice for apps and software but for some reason it’s less common with firmware. Rolling out to 1% (or less, depending on scale) of devices and waiting a day is cheap insurance. Side note: Build a good relationship with customer service people so you hear about these things immediately. 2. A failsafe firmwa…
Sonos completely missed the boat on these two simple concepts as well.
See their new app debacle which coupled a non-reversible firmware update that made the hardware incompatible with the old app.
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#99My Samsung TV got more and more unusable with every update. Over the years, saved apps, like Youtube, started to disappear every time it woke up. Then it would default to their Samsung TV app, rather than your last app. Samsung TV app happened to be on the Baywatch channel every time my young children started the stupid thing. Finally, after it took 2 minutes to load the youtube app, I factory-reset the device, disco…
I have a similar experience with my high-end Samsung TV from 2013. The TV itself still works perfectly so I'm not replacing it soon (still 1080p, not 4K, but...), but over time, Samsung has steadily removed key features with each update. When I first bought it, it supported Skype video calls (and now the integrated webcam can't be used at all), IPTV streaming, and various third-party apps — all of which are now gone.…
LGs, while still smart TVs, are relatively competent at being dumb TVs. Your only other options these days (sans rescuing a dumb TV from e-waste) are commercial panels and projectors.
Re: Samsung Q990D unresponsive after 1020 firmware update
#100Two important features I insist on for products I develop: 1. Staged rollout of firmware updates. It’s common practice for apps and software but for some reason it’s less common with firmware. Rolling out to 1% (or less, depending on scale) of devices and waiting a day is cheap insurance. Side note: Build a good relationship with customer service people so you hear about these things immediately. 2. A failsafe firmwa…
Great points! As an addendum to this, if #2 becomes untenable for whatever reason (such as a vulnerability in the factory firmware image), then this #3 would be good to strive for as well: 3. have a set of conditions to mark the running firmware image as "safe" and have it become the new fallback firmware image for this scenario. That way you can have a recently up-to-date firmware version constantly trailing the new…
Unfortunate you'd need to weave that all the way through the whole product stack in order not to end up in a state that looks like it's working at first glance but actually isn't doing what it is supposed to - like everything running but not showing an image, or everything running except networking is dead (-> also no further updates possible), or (remote) input devices, etc etc