Anker Takes Home Security Off the Grid at IFA 2026 - DTNS 5346

[music] >> This is the Daily Tech News for Thursday, September 3rd, 2026. We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand. >> Today, IFA is underway in Berlin, so we will do our best to cover the most important announcements happening right now, and oh my goodness, so many announcements. It's just a flood of announcements. >> Kind of kind of too much. We hope to get done in time today. >> I'm one of your hosts, Jason Howell. >> I'm Jen Cutter. >> And we're going to start with what you need to know, with the big story. Yes, so this is a consumer technology show that happens in Berlin every year in in Messe Messe Messe Berlin, called IFA. It is officially kicked off, and as usual, there are tons of consumer tech announcements being made from the event. And so we thought we'd do things today a little different because there were so many of them. We're going to talk about the big story, which has to do with Anker and kind of their products, and then after the break, you're going to get a whole bunch of other stuff from IFA. So it's a little different today, and we're going to hope to get through all of it and and get you out of here at the at the time that we normally do. But let's start with Anker. Definitely catching a lot of buzz. They've got a number of products as they usually do at IFA. I call it IFA. I don't know if everybody does, but I like to call it IFA. Anker has the Eufy Mind Base as one product. This is a smart home hub that works on device, so you don't have a monthly fee, right? Like it's tied to the device itself. It is matter enabled, which is really nice. It has up to 20 camera channels, 34 sensors. It supports HomeKit, Alexa, Google Home, Home Assistant. So it supports all the main players in security, in home security, and home devices. And it has this neural processor, um, which runs what Anker is calling its true smart agent, um, and that allows it to do things like recognize faces, posture, of which mine is horrible right now, I just noticed, uh, behavior, objects, and again, going back to this idea that it's all done locally, it's not working in the cloud, it's all done on device. And, um, yeah, there's a just a whole bunch of other features, the ability to store your photos, videos, clips from all those security cameras onto, um, an a network attached storage via an agent that's built into it, um, organizing, you know, a family timeline of what's going on and building highlight reels based on all that information, push notifications, um, yeah, it's just a really cool device if you want to monitor your home security through some of Anker's other products, you don't have to rely on the cloud, but you do, uh, need to wait for the price and release details on this cuz they are not there yet. And I I find this interesting, Jen, because so much is happening in the world of AI, like in a different perspective, um, about like, you yes, you've got the the in the cloud frontier models, but then you've got your local, there's like a big push for local non-reliance on the cloud, which has cost savings, which has data protection and privacy savings, um, and this kind of reminds me of that. >> My two favorite words with AI are on device. >> On device? >> Yes. Uh, no monthly fees, which also means like, okay, good, so they can't turn it off when they're bored. >> [laughter] >> Right. Yeah, you're kind of in control, right? That's a that's a big part of that. So, I think that's great to have more devices that are kind of leaning into that. That's that's good for, um, good for consumers, anyways. Um, other security products from Anker, the eufy line, there's a smart security shield sensor, it has a a radar, uh, for that, and this is uh to help the mind base that I just talked about uh with some of those security alerts. You've got that it can detect uh strangers up to 30 m away. There's a new video doorbell uh with 3K tracking technology. That's going to be $300 later this month. Um an eight-channel uh network video recording system with 2K security cameras that, you know, can do all sorts of fun things uh that you might want out of a security camera tracking, like auto framing, uh smart video search, uh 24/7 recording, so you just want to want them to run and and kind of go daisy chain or something like that. I'm sure it can do that. Um and yeah, there's a $70 window camera coming this year. It's a little 2.5K device with a with a cup-like shield uh design, so it can reduce some of the glare. So, basically what that is is you can attach it to the inside of a window. Just pop it right on and it can do its its magic. These devices are getting really flexible and in, you know, understanding like we all have different homes with different needs and um, you know, that customizability of these systems is becoming a real priority. So, yeah, I think that sounds neat. >> They also have this presence sensing wall sensor made to detect falls, which really like leaped out at me. A lot of seniors are staying in their homes longer. This to me is huge. One of my great aunts broke her hip recently uh because she's staying in her home and as as often as people go over, it's not the same as being there 24/7. So, like she has a cell phone now cuz it's like, "Listen, just carry this with you and whenever you need anything, call us." But to have something like this to auto detect and hopefully ping one of us would, I think, avert some tragedies. And and senior assistive tech, big future market. >> Mhm. Well, yeah, and I mean this is the thing that's not very, you know, it's not limited to just a few cases. >> at all. >> It's not either, but it's really important. Like as, you know, as we get older, so do our parents and the people that we might caretake. And so, having this insight, you know, I think they there's like fall detection on a lot of wearables now. I know the Apple Watch has it. >> not been able to convince her to, but we we got a cell phone start, but something like this that she doesn't have to wear is pretty big. >> Yeah, you don't have to convince them at point. It's just like, you know, it's there. And then, you know, and then going back to the earlier announcement of uh that that we talked about the Mind Base. If this is connecting into that, then this ongoing kind of like constantly monitoring thing doesn't sound so um Big Brother. You know what I mean? Ominous. [laughter] That's the right word because it's it's all done locally anyways. So, it's like just giving you the best of both worlds, I suppose. So, that's actually really cool. Um what else from Anker? I mean, they just as they usually do, they just pour out announcements at events like this. Sleep Earbuds 4 and Sleep Earbuds 4 Pro has a touchscreen case, allows you to set alarms, check notifications, play relaxing sounds all from the case. Um it has a track assess adjustment system, which basically uses the headphones' built-in sensors to measure different factors. So, PPG, heart rate, HRV, and then it can adjust the audio to find you know, a better kind of sleep sound for you because this sound results in better sleep for you, we've noticed. So, therefore, you know, it it gives that to you while you're wearing them. So, um smart earbuds getting even smarter, I guess, telling you this is what you need to be listening to because when you do it, you have really good sleep. I've noticed. >> This is one of the things I would love to test as I am famously not an earbuds person. Um but I do need sleep tracking and to be able to do this without wearing my watch, which is starting to irritate me at night, I think I think would be good. But I just I'm terrified. Like earbuds normally are like, oh no. Earbuds because I tend to sleep on my side. >> Yes. >> Again, like I'd love to try it. So that's we're going to know more in October and November. No price yet. So we'll see how uh >> [laughter] >> how swingable this is. It's a test. >> I'm the same way. I can't wear I hate wearing a watch to bed. It just feels wrong to me. And then I definitely >> So. >> What's that? >> Is it I alternate hands. Like also cuz I'm left-handed so ordinarily my watch is on my right hand anyway. And then so yeah, I will alternate at night because I do need that data. That data is important to me and my doctor. So. >> Yeah, okay. So it's important. I mean, I would say the thing that would work best for me would be like a ring because that's that's enough out of the way that I wouldn't notice it. But definitely earbud, like I'm a side sleeper too a lot of the time and I know that would get uncomfortable for me. That wouldn't work for me. Uh sleep lab speaking of sleep speakers that also play relaxing music. So sleep lab pro speakers use radar to track the sleep, heart rate, breathing, play that music. Both have a circular lamp and there is no pricing or availability on that. And then yeah, and then I mean, there's just a number of other things from Anker. Soundcore Arrow Clip [snorts] 2 Pro, these are clip-ons that transcribe what it hears, like meetings, that's 230, no shipping date. Over the ear Soundcore Space 2 Pro, got these names. And the Soundcore Liberty Buds 2, some more earbuds. I've actually tried a much earlier version of the Liberty Buds that I really liked. Anker RIC hearing aids. So you got four beamforming microphones and a neural chip to isolate the sound that you want to hear from the background noise. Love to see it. Uh there's a robot vacuum Omni E35. There's a Uफी robot lawn mower uh S2 Ma M A um and lots of new chargers, which Anker is very well known for. One of my all-time favorite chargers is an Anker charger. I mean, it's a huge sucker, but anytime I go traveling, I bring that with me because it powers my laptop, it powers my phone, so I'm always looking forward to what >> Is that the funky-looking fold-out one that you have? >> It's a Is it a fold-out one? It's right here. It's so It's so good that I have it within reach. >> everybody talks about it, uh the next time I need a charger, I'm probably going for uh for them. >> Boop. Yep, you just pull the the cable like right out of it. I mean, this is not new, obviously. This was like last year, I think. It was a year old. I love their charging tech. >> Yeah, no, Anker's fantastic. So, that's Anker from IFA, and we got more from not Anker, but lots of other companies. We'll talk about them in a moment. >> DTNS is made possible by you, the listener. Thank you to Bridget Hargis, Joni, Hi-Tech Oki, and Chris Zaragoza. >> All right, like we said, this is a deep dive into IFA today, so we're just going to dive right in starting with Belkin. >> Belkin introduced three low-cost SoundForm headphones, the Isolate, Dot, and Play. Isolate earbuds carry 45 decibels of hybrid ANC. The Dot earbuds come in a non-ANC version for $35, and ANC versions for $45. While both offer Bluetooth multipoint and custom EQ inside the connected app. Isolate Play are designed for uh children ages five and up, foldable over-ear headphones with a maximum loudness cap at 85 decibels, and a rockstar mode for audio sharing. Those run 50 bucks and will be available this month. >> I love that those headphones have the the capped volume cuz like believe me, I've been there with my kids and when it's in the software and they have control over it, they're always going to push past it. So, having it actually capped inside of the hardware, I think is a really good move to save their hearing. Not to just be a jerk parent. >> [laughter] >> I just want your hearing to survive, kids. What can I say? Uh Belkin also announced ultra charge pro power banks. They got power banks as well using its semi-solid state boost solid cell technology. Um that is according to Belkin safer battery architecture that actually reduces the risk of swelling and fire. It's um it's not solid state as the name suggests. It's um it's a gel-like layer that they add to the liquid electrolyte that also happens to result in a thinner, more like a like a credit card-sized pack. And they have a few different types of this, a 5,000 mA hour Q12 model that um or sorry, Q I I what is it? That the magnet, the the the Qi 2. There we go. That's what I I transcribed incorrectly. The Qi 2 model. So, it actually snaps to the back of your phone. That's around $70. And then there's a 10,000 mA hour model with a display that runs $90. So, I like seeing changes in battery tech. >> Yeah, no. Well, electro- electrolyte layer just always sounds cool, too. So, >> Yeah, it does. It does. >> DJI announced the Osmo 360 2, an upgrade to its 360 action camera with support of up to 8K resolution at 60 frames per second. As well, there's improved dynamic range and AI low light noise reduction mode, faster charging, and replaceable lenses in case they get scratched. And this will run you uh 39 euros for a pair of the lenses. The camera itself starts at 589 euros, but no US release is planned for now. >> I think that's really cool being able to swap out those lenses and to get a pair for like 40 euros. Like that's that seems low to me. Like I would imagine it'd be like, "Yeah, we'll give you a replaceable lens for like 100 euro or something like that." That's crazy. That's super cool though. I love that for durability and longevity of products. So, I love to see that coming from DJI. Uh DJI also had some RoboVac. We actually have a slew of RoboVac news. So, if you're in the market, you got a lot to choose from now. Starting with DJI um with the new Romo P2 and A2 RoboVacs, they had millimeter-level obstacle sensing. There's a lidar-guided 123° mopping arm uh and legs that can clear 8.5 cm threshold. So, it's got a little bit of clearance there. Uh they can also capture home imagery. think this is important again touching on what we're talking about earlier with Anker in a new local data mode that keeps the data on the device, no access to the internet, and prices start at 1,300 euros. And I mean that local data mode um first premiered on DJI drones. Now it's coming here and very much a response to something that you've inevitably talked about on DTNS as have I, uh FCC's RoboVan in the US which basically means that DJI products aren't aren't for sale in the US right now. I think this is a direct response to that. >> Roborock showed off the S7 MaxV a RoboVac that has a wheel-leg design making it capable of scaling and cleaning stairs as well as move over the top of certain small obstacles. Roborock also announced the F25 Ultra Steam Gen 2 which can steam clean at around 365° Fahrenheit as well as vacuum. They also showed off outdoor Robo cleaners like Rock Neo Q2 lidar lawn mower with steep slope climbing capabilities of up to 45% incline, and there is the Rock Aqua P1 that can clean your pool for up to 3.5 solid hours. How big is your pool? There is no pricing currently announced. >> Don't you just love the name Rock Aqua? I mean, it sounds like rock opera, and so that's probably why I love it, but I'm like that. Whoever named that, give that person a raise. I think that's awesome. Rock Aqua. Yeah. It's kind of sounds like it could be a band or something like that. Um and then if you see the the actual Seros Rover, which is, you know, it's it's the the one with the wheels and everything can scale stairs. It kind of looks more robot than vacuum. It's like a robot that can also vacuum the floor, which I guess, I don't know. I >> Is the point? >> know. I guess that's the point. Distinction without a difference is what it is, I suppose. >> [snorts] >> Uh Dyson announced the Hush Jet Big Plus Quiet Cool Pure Plus Purifier. >> Oh my goodness, these names. >> Dyson, come on. >> Oh, yeah, it's hard. Like we want to talk about your stuff, but we don't want to spend 20 minutes doing it. Um this is intended for long-range multi-room purification. It has a directional nozzle, so it's meant for large spaces essentially. It comes in three sizes actually, uh starting at around $1,100. Dyson also introduced the R3 Neurovi Spot Plus Scrub UV Robo Vacuum and Robo Mop. That uses UV as the name implies, but also green illumination, um AI vision to recognize nearly 200 types of spills and household objects for it to, you know, have in its database and navigate around and know how to clean effectively, I suppose. Uh that Robo Vac runs $1,200, and honestly, that's just a taste of what they announced because as with everything at IFA, there was just so much. So we had to pick and choose, but there you go. That's Dyson. >> We chose to talk about the JMGO $3,499 Iris Ultra Max, the first consumer single chip DLP projector to deliver 4K at 120 hertz with a super bright 6,500 ISO lumen triple laser engine. It includes a low latency mode that will be useful for gamers and has an AI powered gimbal, which is handy because this style of projector isn't designed to be fixed in one place, but rather installed as needed. >> Yeah, this one really caught my eye because I actually have a JMGO or is it Jimgo? I don't know, but one of these projectors, not this one of course, but a 4K laser projector from GMG JMGO that has a very similar design and I absolutely love it. The way they've designed it, you can just set it up in a in a super, you know, speedy fashion, put it anywhere in the room and point it at the wall and it will do the keystoneing to fit the space that you have. It's really bright. >> It's just It's easier to just like set it up on a whim, watch your movie and then break it down and go. You don't have to have it permanently installed and so it's very mobile even though it's high high performance. So, I'm very interested in that. Although I'm not interested in paying $3,500. So, there's that. >> [snorts] >> Uh TCL unveiled the new P80 series smartphones with its easy on the eyes next paper display technology. I absolutely love that technology. It simulates a monochromatic e-ink experience. TCL says that mode gives the phone up to 7 days of battery life. Has a 6.83 inch 120 hertz OLED screen for the first time. Um also a 50 megapixel 3X uh periscope camera for solid optical zoom. Starts at 349 euros with a launch in the US in the near future. Uh like I said, next paper devices I've actually tested a bunch of them and reviewed a bunch of them in the last couple of years. I love them. They're great and they're usually pretty affordable. And so on the affordable side of things, they do something that no other phone does in quite the same way. So, I'm always very interested in them. >> Xiaomi teased the new gold 18 Pro smartphone. It's next to book-style foldable that features, you guessed it, a wider aspect ratio, though specifics were not released yet. We do know that the cover display is 5.38 in and the inner screen is 7.58 in when unfolded. Inside is Xiaomi's own chip, the XR 03, which they call a flagship AI SOC that combines GPU, CPU, and NPU into a single chip. Xiaomi plans a full launch in China on September 7th, a few days before Apple's big event next week. >> I wonder if they did that on purpose. Hmm. >> We'll never know. >> Everyone's doing the wide foldable thing. I guess it's just the way it is now. It's It's the new hotness. And I have yet to see one in person. I don't know if >> Or they're trying to make it happen. We'll see if this all catches on. >> They're trying to make it happen. Yeah, that's true. That That could be the case. And finally, one last IFA story, HTC launched its VIVE Eagle smart glasses, which we have heard of before because they launched overseas about a year ago. Now coming to the US, Europe, and UK, and Australia. Orders open starting today. The glasses have a 12 MP camera with 3K video capture, open-ear speakers, 4 gigs of RAM, 32 gigs of storage. They run on Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 chip. HTC does have two frame styles, rounded and squared, depending on what you like on your face, several colors with clear and sunglasses versions. The glasses though, they offer 2 years of VIVE AI Plus, which basically brings ChatGPT and Gemini into the smart glasses for you to use, of course, not just into them. HTC says that any data that's collected will not be used to train any models. Requests from the glasses are are anonymized and HTC also built in privacy protections around the LED light cuz there's a lot of you know, a lot of negative energy around those cameras right now that signals that the glasses are recording including an automatic shutoff when the LED is obscured or the glasses are removed. So the glasses will not record any video or take any pictures when they're not on a face basically. If a bystander, I think this is really important. If a bystander says something to the effect of stop filming or stop filming me or whatever, the glasses will stop recording. So this puts the person on the other side of the glasses, this gives them some agency in that scenario. The base model will sell for $500 while a photochromic lens version runs $600. So I think that feature is really important. >> Everyone needs to steal that feature. >> Yeah, I think that's important to have like maybe then people won't feel as as like a well, I don't know. People are still going to feel violated >> going to call it the pervert glasses because you know, the attempt happened in the first place, but being able to stop it before you end up on TikTok is huge. >> That is. That is. And another thing that those glasses do that I have these these Rokid AI glasses style. I actually did a video on these about a couple of weeks ago on my channel. But one thing that these glasses do that the Rokids do also is you get your your battery life out of there, but I don't know if you can see actually here. See here. Oh, the camera's in a different spot. There's little pogo pins on the arms right there. And so what that means is there's this little battery pack that you can snap on. And the glasses that HTC is doing have that as well. So it just gives you extra battery life if that's important to kind of extend the battery life. So I think that's kind of cool, but yeah, there you go. That's That's Ethan in a nutshell. I'm sure we missed some things, but that was a lot. >> And if any of you have any feedback about anything that gets brought up on the show, whether this is too much or too little, please get in touch with us on the socials. We are @DTNSSHOW on X, Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, and Mastodon. And on TikTok and YouTube, you can find us at Daily Tech News Show. >> All right, that was just one aspect of the technology landscape today, all in Berlin, of course, but we've got a lot of other things to cover. So, let's get to the headlines. >> Nvidia has made it official, official official. It will acquire open-source generative model platform Hugging Face. We discussed what the deal would mean last Thursday on the show, but the short version is Nvidia wants to encourage open weight models, so more companies will need its chips, and Hugging Face gets more cash to develop its platform. This is analogous to when Microsoft bought GitHub, as a, you know, just so you you get how that's going. Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, said, quote, "Hugging Face will remain an open platform, and Nvidia compute will not be required to build on or deploy through Hugging Face." >> Mhm, very interesting. Nvidia gets a pretty powerful and and strong open-source property um in its portfolio. That's a big deal there. A leaked video shows that iOS 27 will apparently add a new iPhone Handoff feature, which lets you use the same phone number on two iPhones at once by setting up a companion eSIM on the second device. T-Mobile is set to be the first US carrier with support um according to what we know at this point, anyways. >> Uber launched the UK's first robo-taxi service in London using 15 Wave powered Ford Mustang Mach-Es, each with a safety driver in the cab. You can't explicitly request one for the time being, but if it's available, it will show up as an option during a regular Uber booking. >> Tech CEOs including Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, I'm sure there were more, but they joined US administration officials at the G20 summit in North Carolina where member nations backed the US supported Carolina principles, what's called a light-touch AI framework that favors enforcing existing laws basically over creating new regulatory agencies. >> Meta released Muse Spark 1.3, which it says is competitive with frontier models on coding and agentic tasks. A Max reasoning version is coming after additional safety testing. >> And then in Microsoft land, Microsoft's changing its earnings reporting structure to just two segments. Agents and infra will include Azure and Microsoft 365 cloud, devices and consumer will include search, ads, Xbox devices, and Windows licensing. Microsoft will also start reporting revenue numbers for Azure, not just percentage growth because since 2025 Microsoft's divisions were productivity and business processes, intelligent cloud, and more personal computing. So, changing how they're reporting these things in their earnings. >> Thanks to Motang in the subreddit for this one. CERN plans to move more than 2200 industrial accelerator control computers and embedded system from RHEL to Debian 13 by the end of 2026. CERN says the new default compiler baseline would make otherwise unusable older hardware obsolete. >> Windows 11 update KB5120998, there will be a quiz, so memorize that, is resetting desktop backgrounds to solid black and wiping theme and mouse settings on both two 24 H2 and 25 H2. It is optional, but installs automatically if you have auto updates turned on. So, be aware, you might want to check. >> And Vivaldi 8.2 adds an install button for progressive web apps and a built-in calculator in the address bar that copies results to your clipboard when you hit enter, which I admit I would use a fair bit. >> Mhm, indeed. And finally, we end every episode of DTNS with some shared perspectives. Google DeepMind just released Weather Next 3. It's a new model for weather forecasting that has proven to be one of the most accurate according to operational weather bench. When talked previously about Google's contributions to weather models, we asked if this was the first time people had heard about it. Well, Rob Bug's Life responded. >> Rob writes, "This is the first place I heard about the Google weather model. Good for them though. Hope to see more open / public contributions like this. And thanks for making sure we got the important news and not just flashy news." >> Well, we certainly try. It's, you know, it's good to have a little bit of both. And go weather, the weather predictions always so wonky and all over the place. >> Yeah, we got 9,000 alerts in Toronto yesterday because of all the hail and DVP flooded and Roger Stadium was destroyed and lots of stuff going on. So, yes, better weather modeling is a is always a big plus. >> It's important to know what's going on in the weather, especially in 2026. >> So, uh thank you Rob for telling us what you were thinking about. We want to know what the rest of you are thinking about. Do you have some insight into a story? Please share it with us over at feedback@dailytechnewshow.com. >> Yeah, thanks again Rob for sending in and contributing to to show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron. patreon.com/dtns. See you tomorrow. >> [music] [music] >> The DTNS family of podcasts helping each other understand. [music] >> Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program. >> [laughter]