Samsung's design issues
Or, why I don’t like Samsung’s products.
Example 1: Emoji
In Chinese there’s a saying of “画蛇添足”. Its literal meaning is “draw a snake then add legs”. We use it on people who do extra things that are wrong. It’s the perfect phrase for this Samsung example.
It was 2017, long before Covid, and I still commute by Caltrain plus bicycle 3 days a week. One day, on my evening commute, I messaged my wife that I’ll be arriving home at roughly 6:30pm. When typing that message, Gboard suggested the 6:30 clock face emoji. I didn’t use that emoji, because I noticed that the emoji on Android was wrong (and also she’s not very good at reading analog clock faces).
Noticing it being wrong piqued my curiosity, so I checked on Emojipedia to see whether other platform’s emojis are also wrong. To my surprise, most of them were wrong, so I took a screenshot on Emojipedia and tweeted about it. I’m not going to link my tweet here, but here’s the screenshot I took back then:
Why are they wrong? You might ask. On most analog clocks, the hour hand does not just “jump” every hour. It gradually advances every minute or even second. So, at 6:30, the hour hand should be halfway between 6 and 7, instead of pointing directly at 6.
(btw, this is also the reason I don’t like Withing’s smart watches, because at least the one I used also makes its minute hand “jump” every minute, instead of advancing it gradually across the minute.)
So, in this screenshot, only Microsoft got it right, and every other big company was wrong. But why do I pick at Samsung here? Because in this screenshot Samsung was extra wrong. They added a second hand, pointing at roughly 50. People use this emoji to mean 6:30, not 6:30:50. If you really want to add a second hand, point it at 0.
To be fair Samsung is no longer extra wrong today, they are just as wrong as others. I checked Emojipedia again at 2022 and tooted about it:
Basically: Google fixed it. Samsung is still wrong but at least they removed the second hand to be just as wrong as others, no longer extra wrong. Microsoft somehow decided that being correct is boring and joined the dark side.
(Today the correctness of this type of emojis among big companies is roughly the same as 2022.)
Example 2: Vesa mount on monitors
A few years ago I bought a Samsung monitor to be used on my standing desk. On my standing desk I use a monitor arm, so when purchasing monitors I made sure they have vesa mount. The Samsung monitor I bought does have one in its technical specs.
But what they didn’t say in the tech specs is that they have a rounded/arched cutout around the vesa mount.
VESA mount plates from the monitor arms are rectangles. Rectangles have 4 corners. At least 2 of the corners don’t really fit into the round cutout of the Samsung monitor. So in the end, I have to pad the 4 mounting screws up to make the mounting plate out of the cutout, like this:
Funny that when looking at the wikipedia page of vesa mount, it’s also called “Flat Display Mounting Interface”. It has “flat” in its name, but Samsung decided that being flat is boring and need to screw that.
Example 3: Kitchen appliances
Fast forward to 2025. We just bought a new house from a builder. The builder put Dacor appliances in the kitchen. And Dacor is supposed to be Samsung’s “high-end” kitchen appliance brand.
Being a Samsung brand, they support SmartThings via WiFi (vs. Z-Wave/Zigbee/Matter/etc. that needs a hub). Both the induction cooktop and the oven have a touchscreen that I can connect to my wifi from there, without needing any app. But, contrary to what me or most people would think, connecting them to WiFi via the touchscreen doesn’t really help adding them to SmartThings.
When you try to add them to SmartThings, SmartThings asks you to scan some QR code. They don’t have any QR code sticked on them, and there’s no way to make them display a pairing QR code on the touchscreen, despite having a touchscreen. Instead, you have to manually choose to skip QR code scanning on the SmartThings app, wait forever, then it will instruct you to pair them to your phone manually.
And it won’t auto find them just because they are in the same WiFi as your phone. You have to manually put them into some pairing mode via the touchscreen, which essentially makes them disconnect from the WiFi and enter a hotspot mode, then your phone must connect to their hotspot WiFi (which doesn’t provide internet), in order to finish the pairing in the SmartThings app. In the process you would need to give them your WiFi information via the SmartThings app on your phone again. So what does connecting to WiFi via the touchscreen actually do, exactly? Getting time from NTP servers?
The dishwasher has a QR code stick on it, but that QR code is not for pairing, and you still need to make it enter pairing mode. It also lacks the touchscreen, so you need to use some magic key combination to make it enter the hotspot pairing mode.
Then comes the fridge. After you open the door, there’s a “platform” with some touch sensitive buttons you can use to turn on/off the ice maker, adjust the temperature, etc.. Those buttons are touch sensitive, not really physical buttons. They are inside a fridge, which can often have condensing water. Touch sensitive things hate water because to them water looks very similar to fingers. Those buttons are very hard to press correctly because of that.
And after added all of them to SmartThings, in SmartThings when I click any of them it just takes forever to load and don’t give me any useful controls of them. So I just added them to my Home Assistant via SmartThings integration, and I immediately get useful actions and data for them in Home Assistant. At least I no longer to touch any of the buttons inside the fridge ever again because all those controls are available inside Home Assistant.
Conclusion
I really don’t like Samsung’s product design.