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Smartphones may have officially become so good that a 2- to 3-year-old device handles daily tasks, heavy gaming, and AI apps without breaking a sweat. In this episode of Tech Today, we question the annual upgrade cycle, break down China's massive humanoid robotics lead, and review a 5-lakh-rupee AI-powered smart home gym. Big Tech Story: The Era of the 10% Better Smartphone Every year, flagship releases draw massive queues, yet real hardware leaps have plateaued into minor iterative bumps. Slightly faster chips, identical megapixel camera sensors, minor battery tweaks, and subtle redesigns. Comparing the iPhone 16 Pro Max to the 17 Pro Max, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 to Fold 8 Ultra, and the Pixel 10 Pro to Pixel 11 Pro reveals that year-on-year everyday user experience barely shifts. We get to the real reasons. AI Guru: Inside China's Humanoid Robot Revolution At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, over 2,000 robots from 666 teams competed in sprinting, high jumps, boxing, and football. With an X-Humanoid bot sprinting 100 meters in 9.39 seconds and Chinese manufacturers shipping 97% of all global humanoid robots in H1 2026 (nearly 19,000 units), we break down the 3 core structural drivers behind China's near-monopoly Tech Review: IMBODY Power S Smart Gym Can a single connected mirror replace an entire commercial fitness center? We test the IMBODY Power S, an AI-guided strength training system priced at Rs 5,00,000 in India. Digital Resistance Engine: Delivers up to 118kg of motorized digital resistance with auto-adjusting safety features. 43-Inch Smart Mirror: Houses a responsive touchscreen dashboard offering 5 training modes, gamified cardio modules, and real-time form tracking. The Verdict: While it offers a sleek, space-saving luxury setup for busy executives, we break down why dedicated powerlifters and athletes will still prefer the equipment variety of a traditional gym. How long do you usually keep your smartphone before upgrading? Can an AI smart mirror ever replace a real gym membership for you? Drop your thoughts in the comments below! Share this episode with a gadget lover and hit Subscribe to catch every deep dive with Cyrus on Tech Today!
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00:13think for a second about the phone you are having in your hand right now whether it's due an upgrade
00:20in your heart you know that the phone you have can run maybe two three years more but your
00:26companies these smartphone companies are still wanting you to think that you need to upgrade
00:31and that's the reason they keep launching the phone every year is it time to reconsider these
00:36upgrade cycles instead of launching new devices every year do they need to slow down it's an
00:41important topic and we will talk about it on the show this week plus the robot revolution in china
00:47is taking over the internet and we as indians as a tech enthusiast i want to ask how is china
00:54so good
00:55in robotics right now is there a secret formula some sort of a secret sauce they have plus if you
01:01want to see all of the theatrics that these robots have been doing please watch the show and it's
01:05amazing what these machines have been able to do and finally workout equipment that is trying to
01:10replace an actual gym is it practical and who should buy something like this that's our review
01:16on the tech today show this week i'm cyrus and let's kick things off with the top tech headlines
01:22of the week meta has agreed to pay up to 18 billion dollars to resolve landmark federal lawsuits brought
01:34by dozens of u.s states the litigation accused meta of intentionally engineering addictive platform
01:40features that harmed the mental health of minors on instagram and facebook
01:47alongside the record payout the agreement mandates strict new safety guard rails and tighter time
01:54limit controls for teenage accounts
02:01apple has officially scheduled its next major hardware keynote for wednesday september the ninth
02:07streaming live from apple park the event is widely expected to headline the new iphone 18 pro lineup
02:14the apple watch series 12 and updated airports analysts also anticipate apple could preview the first
02:22ever foldable hardware and provide deeper integration updates about apple intelligence
02:33openai has officially introduced sponsored ad placements inside chat gpt for free tier users across india
02:40the ads appear as clearly labeled sponsored cards positioned directly below relevant ai answers targeting commercial
02:48queries like shopping and travel openai maintains that ads will not influence core ai responses sensitive
02:55queries remain restricted and paid subscribers will continue to have an entirely ad free experience
03:06roxstar games has issued a public statement following a widespread online leak of early gameplay footage from
03:13grand theft auto 6 the developer called the unauthorized leaks heartbreaking for the development team
03:19but confirmed the game is nearly finished and remains on schedule parent company take two interactive has initiated legal
03:27proceedings in new york federal court to pull the leaked material
03:36and apple has launched the new mac mini with its m6 chip starting at 99 900 in india the compact
03:44desktop gets a 12 core cpu and a 12 core gpu with apple claiming up to 40 percent faster cpu
03:51performance
03:522x faster graphics and up to 4x faster ai performance than the m4 model it also gets 557 bluetooth 6
04:01and
04:01faster connectivity pre-orders are open with sales starting september 22nd
04:14every time a new iphone launches or any other smartphone you see these fans
04:18lines line up outside of maybe apple stores and they just want to buy one because it's a new iphone
04:24and i feel it's just crazy and it's a trend we've been seeing over the past four or five years
04:30whenever a new smartphone launches people just line up and everybody is upgrading because for us i feel
04:37that most of us have premium smartphones that can run two to three years very easily because of the
04:42simple apps that you have to run on them whatsapp instagram youtube some banking apps maybe even
04:47games and most of these ai features that are being upgraded they can also run on devices that are two
04:53to three years old and yet many buy or upgrade a phone almost every year now upgrade wise i feel
05:02it's
05:02mostly the chipset some camera sensors rest everything is the same yes new colors come out but moreover the
05:10features are exactly the same what you had the previous years but do you really need to upgrade
05:15just because a new phone launches every year do companies really need to launch a phone every year
05:20too let's dive into all of this because these are questions that needs answering
05:31now let's be fair the latest phones are better but are they better enough to justify replacing a
05:37perfectly good phone that's only two years old take apple's pro max series for example
05:44here's what's changed between the iphone 16 pro max and the 17 pro max besides the processor telephoto
05:51lens the front camera and the body type most of the device has similar specs now if you are upgrading
05:58from an iphone 12 to 14 these changes can be significant but if you're holding an iphone 16 pro max
06:05then your everyday experience doesn't change a lot and this isn't just apple look at samsung
06:11the recently launched galaxy z fold 8 ultra is thinner than the fold 7. it has a bigger 5000 image
06:18battery a new snapdragon chip and a 15 megapixel ultra wide camera compared to the fold 7's 12 megapixel
06:25unit however it's clear that samsung is still building on essentially the same idea and big breakthroughs
06:31have become harder to find beyond folding a phone there is no next big innovation right now the case
06:38with the newly launched pixel isn't different it has the same specs minus the few software upgrades
06:44and a new processor and even the upcoming iphone 18 pro max is expected to look broadly similar to the
06:5117 pro max with the big changes reportedly being the new 820 pro chip a variable aperture main camera
06:58and a smaller dynamic island essentially we may have reached the era of a 10 better smartphone every
07:06year so if the upgrades are becoming smaller then why keep launching a new flagship every year that's
07:13the question well there are several reasons the first one is the competition right now now apple cannot
07:20simply stop launching an iphone while their competitors samsung and google continue to launch theirs
07:26companies can't skip a year and allow rival companies to dominate this whole conversation about
07:32flagships because today the smartphone i feel is just not about the product itself anymore it's a
07:38platform an ecosystem and sort of a statement that the company is advancing in technology
07:45then there is the business model along with the phone a company sells services software and accessories
07:53like apple explicitly markets its upgrade program around upgrading at the end of the lease term
08:00samsung's new galaxy forever program in india lets buyers return or upgrade the phone from the 10th
08:07month with an assured buyback of up to 55 percent in the first year that makes the upgrade cycle
08:13easier and psychologically perhaps harder to escape and we are seeing that people are holding on to their
08:20phones for a longer period of time uh replacement rate like five to six years back used to be like
08:2524 to 30 months uh in india market this has now increased to almost like 41 and this year we
08:32believe that
08:32the replacement rate will hit its highest ever at 49 months in india because of the memory crisis what
08:38we are seeing and at the same time people a lot of users think that the current phones are good
08:43enough
08:43to last them longer for another year and a half even if they want to upgrade but overall trend is
08:49like
08:49the smartphone is hitting the flat part of the s-curve where your hardware innovation is not
08:56accelerating at the same rate but going forward two to three years down the night everything will be
09:02driven by experience led and as a result of it uh even with the 13 decline in volume in india
09:09for the
09:09smartphone market and the value will still increase by two to three percent uh this year because more
09:14people will buy uh premium devices uh this year that input is important because it tells us that
09:21consumers are holding on to phones longer but there is another number that tells us why companies
09:27haven't slowed down and that's money so the industry has discovered something quite clever that it
09:35doesn't necessarily need to sell dramatically more phones it can sell more expensive phones and consumers
09:42are even buying them thanks to emis and more offers apple's iphone revenue reached 209.6 billion
09:50dollars in fiscal 2025 up from 201.2 billion dollars the previous year in india the premium segment has
09:59become even more important now one in every five smartphones shipped in india in 2025 was premium while apple
10:07captured 28 of india's smartphone market by value so there is an uncomfortable contradiction while
10:14consumers are keeping phones longer but when they do upgrade they are spending more and this year's
10:21biggest problem for the smartphone industry is memory prices the same memory right now is being demanded by
10:28all of these ai data centers and smartphone companies aren't getting plenty of these now this has led to
10:35all of these companies increasing prices by almost 80 percent quarter on quarter in q2 2026 and in other
10:43analysis it estimates that memory prices surged dramatically enough that memory itself has overtaken
10:50the processor as the most expensive individual component inside a smartphone so for some smartphone
10:58segments manufacturers are already responding by changing the specifications and delaying launches
11:04and passing on some of that cost to the consumers now and that changes the argument if manufacturers are
11:13already struggling with higher component costs perhaps the answer isn't to keep pushing consumers towards
11:19a new phone every year perhaps it's to make the phone they already own last longer and there is another
11:26problem despite recycling programs the un projects e-waste to reach 82 million tons by 2030 and mobile phones
11:35and its accessories contribute a major part of that since it's the fastest growing small electronics category
11:43the emergence of the second hand and refurbished market has helped deal with this but there's still a long way
11:50to go
11:51yes definitely i think refurbished smartphone ecosystem can become 10 times or 20 times bigger when the
12:00smartphones are designed before they are manufactured the oems think of the repairability so from opening a
12:07phone changing the battery to removing the screen which are the two major components which get affected i think
12:13if oem start thinking from the design part only then it'll bring a big change another aspect is software
12:20support we have seen during our lifetime that a lot of devices have life but because a software support
12:27is pulled up they don't support basic apps which leads to non-usability of these devices which could
12:33have extended their life further there are companies already trying fairphone has built its entire
12:40business around making phones repairable modular and long lasting even cmf has offered such options
12:48its latest devices are designed around replaceable components and longer software support but here's
12:55the catch while fairphone has shown that the model is possible it has not shown that this model can
13:01replace the economics of apple or samson and that's the real challenge so do companies really need to launch
13:08phones every year because there will always be people who want the latest hardware while it may be a
13:15practical solution it can't happen to because too many factors compel these companies to keep innovating
13:21every year not to mention the brutal capitalistic ecosystem maybe the change will come when certain
13:28policies are adopted like giving the two-year-old phone meaningful software updates make batteries easier and
13:35cheaper to replace guarantee spare parts and offer support for refurbished devices the irony here is the
13:43smartphones today have become just too good that they can last two three years maybe even beyond that and
13:49they just do not feel obsolete and i feel this may push companies to innovate better because the next big
13:56innovation shouldn't just be another camera sensor upgrade or a chip that is 10 faster maybe it's also time
14:04that you as a consumer reconsider upgrading every year and make sensible choices based on your needs and not your
14:13wants
14:19in the last few days china showed us something that the rest of the world isn't even close to it's
14:27an
14:27exhibition of robots doing things that we could not imagine possible this early i'm talking about
14:33sprinting playing football boxing high jumps over 2000 robots and 666 teams including 16 countries this
14:43was the world humanoid robot games in beijing now while the rest of the world is still figuring out how
14:50to get a robot to walk in a straight line right now without it falling over china is hosting a
14:56full-blown
14:57olympics for these robots now complete with all the medal the celebration and the ceremonies and seeing
15:03this makes me wonder at least i'm sure you as well how is china able to develop these robots so
15:10quickly and
15:11so efficiently get this in a session at the official games a robot from exhumanoid ran 100 meters in just
15:209.3 seconds that's faster than the fastest man in the world and there was another robot that smashed
15:27the standing jump record too so the real question we ask on the show is how did they get this
15:33far
15:34and this fast and what should the rest of us actually be learning from what's happening in china right now
15:40the entire leap comes down to three concrete structural reasons because of which this is happening the first
15:48one is supply chain spillover from the chinese ev boom now robots and electric cars by the way need
15:54almost similar parts you're talking about batteries motors and gears and china's already mass producing
16:01all of that for evs at scale in you know different cities over there so a robot isn't a brand
16:08new supply
16:09chain and these companies build it on top of the already existing manufacturing unit now there's another
16:16reason which is reason number two systemic training efficiency the chinese tech giants like agibot take
16:22the exact intelligence that makes these robots smarter and they just hand it over to every competitor
16:29they have now i'm talking about the training code the failure data and that's basically stuff that took
16:35millions of dollars and a lot of years to build now they're providing this for free on the internet for
16:40any robotic startup to just pick up and download who does that now compare that to what's happening in
16:46the west tesla keeps the optimus its robots training data locked down open ai keeps its model all
16:53closed and everyone treats because it's there in a competitive secrets that they want to secure
16:58china is doing exactly the opposite giving away the ladder and letting thousands of smaller companies just
17:05climb all of that at once reason number three and this is really the big one is the coordinated
17:12deployment right now now local governments over there buy these robots in bulk and put them into
17:17real factories and then send that data straight back to the manufacturers now every robot that is
17:25being put into work is getting all of that training data and that training data is being used to make
17:30the
17:30next one and not only that they've also provided these massive incentives and subsidies to these robotics
17:37industries to innovate without worrying about all of the financial constraints or policy hindrances and
17:44it's not that all of these robots are perfect i'll tell you even at the world humanoid robotic games several
17:50robots malfunctioned some lost balance while they were running some couldn't even recover after a stumble
17:57and this just went down too hard in front of everyone and i feel that it's a genuine reminder that
18:04this
18:04technology however fast or improving it might be is still not fully reliable right now however most of
18:12this growth i feel is moving without any oversight and regulation and that could be a problem in the
18:18future if robots are really allowed to run without any checks now let's talk about what's happening with
18:25robotics in india and let's be honest about how we are doing there are organizations trying to push the
18:32envelope at a global stage right now our own india today conclave had its own robot movement when
18:38two humanoid robots including the unitary g1 took center stage delivering a dancing and joke cracking
18:45performance programmed in just days by a company operating out of india however there are also
18:52incidents which just put india on the back foot like what happened uh at the india ai summit where a
18:58university was caught passing off a china made robot as its own innovation which apparently got them
19:04removed from the summit now we've got the software talent our engineers are world-class companies like
19:11adverb and gray orange in india are proving that indian robotics can genuinely compete but china
19:18shipped nearly 19 000 humanoid robots in just the first half of this year alone that's 97 of the global
19:26market not even a lead but nearly a monopoly right now it's what that country has india's number in
19:33that same count as far as the tracker goes is absolutely zero so we really really need to push
19:39our innovation ahead now apart from china the us is very much in this robot race figure a robotics
19:45company is already piloting its robots on bmw's factory floor and onex another company is about to
19:52start shipping a home robot to american families later this year but that's still small numbers
19:58early access proving it works territory and i feel that china is the one gearing up to make all of
20:05these available commercially at scale the way that they've been doing in the smartphone and the laptops
20:11industry over the years and that's a different face of the race entirely the way china has been
20:17scaling the day i am sure is not far when you too might have the opportunity of getting a chinese
20:23robot at your home and i hope whenever they that day comes we use these robots for things like uh
20:30you
20:31know innovation and betterment of humanity and not for things like these
20:43now i have been working out for quite some time now and i've seen fitness tech evolve over the years
20:48now the most common fitness tech that we all use are smart watches right but today i will show you
20:53the
20:53evolution of that which is in this machine now this machine not only has ai but it also has motors
21:00and
21:00also is a compact gym that you can keep in your place now what am i talking about let me
21:05show you
21:16this machine is called the power s an ai guided strength training system designed to bring a
21:23connected workout experience into your homes unlike a traditional home gym there are no stacks of weights
21:30or a complicated collection of machines this one system uses adjustable arms and
21:36motorized digital resistance which can go up to 118 kilograms and all the way down to a half a kilo
21:43no need to change weights and you can alter the resistance using this touch screen in fact it auto
21:50adjusts the resistance if it detects it's getting too much for the user it comes with a 43 inch
21:57interactive smart mirror which is essentially your workout screen trainer and dashboard rolled into one
22:04it's quite responsive and the text is clearly visible despite the reflective surface the machine offers
22:11five different training modes and is designed to cover the basics of full body strength training
22:17the tech inside can guide you through the exercises while giving you real-time information about your
22:23workout and this is where i think embody gets interesting your workout is building a digital record of how you
22:31train this way you can track your performance use different profiles and even connect the machine
22:38with a smart body scale and measuring tape for which you need to pay extra it also comes with a
22:44dedicated
22:44app to track your progress remotely now so many people often complain that whenever they're going to
22:50the gym it gets boring for them right i mean the thrill is not there but for them i have
22:55a solution what a
22:56workout could be gamified because this machine can do that what you need to do in the cardio game
23:01section all you need to do is tap there are these three games which you can play now there's drifting
23:06forest there's island there's ski basically these are movements that have been gamified and help you
23:12with your cardio and i feel this is a great way to engage people and work out harder instead of
23:19boring
23:19cardio exercises with the power s you can actually interact with what's happening on screen i feel
23:27that keeps the user engaged builds interest and keeps them wanting to do cardio consistently but here's
23:34where i think you need to look beyond the technology because as immersive as the power s will look in
23:41your
23:41house or a hotel room it isn't really a replacement for a gym
23:47a gym gives you variety heavier and specialized equipment free weights machines designed for
23:54very specific movements and of course the flexibility to change your workout completely
24:00embody is more about bringing a premium structured workout experience into your home and that makes
24:07its target audience fairly clear if you're a busy professional who enjoys working out has the space for
24:13a machine like this and doesn't want to spend an hour traveling to and from the gym there's a definite
24:20appeal you get sophisticated equipment guided workouts and your performance data without leaving home
24:29but if you're a serious athlete or someone who lives and breathes their training this probably isn't going
24:35to replace the equipment and variety of a proper gym and then there's the elephant in the room the price
24:44this machine with the bench included comes in at 5 lakh rupees inclusive all taxes and accessories may
24:52seem steep to many but this is a growing market in india and the power s may find takers in
24:59high-end homes
25:00and even some commercial properties now clearly this machine is not meant for everyone it's meant for a
25:06niche audience people who can afford an expensive machine like this now if you have an active lifestyle but
25:11you don't get the time to go to an actual gym something like this can definitely help you what i'd
25:16really like is that the ai element the tech inside of this engine that can help you with recommendations
25:22and your you know improving your posture but i feel if people are really willing to spend on a machine
25:28like this maybe in terms of portability it can be a wonder wonder gadget now i don't know whether i
25:35have been
25:36able to convince you to not upgrade your phone this year if you have just bought a phone last year
25:41i
25:42gave you all of the practical reasons the rest i feel is just up to you and if you really
25:47want to
25:48upgrade and want us to review that phone by the way on the show do write to us and we
25:52will get you a full
25:53review i promise that but again for that you will have to write to us i'll see you next week
25:59this is
25:59cyrus signing off on the tech today show take care
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