Willkommen, bienvenue, hi. Welcome to ifa, europe's biggest tech show, where, every year, thousands of people pile into berlin's giant exhibition centre to grab a sneak peek at the latest. . . Well, everything. The press, business and the public can zip around more than two dozen halls full of weird and wonderful displays and demonstrations. You can play pingpong with foldable phones to somehow prove how tough they are. You can meet robot animals, stuffed pets. You might even catch a glimpse of a real live pussycat doll. Yes, even nicole scherzinger, lead singer of the aforementioned supergroup, was brought in to bring some bling to the tech discussions. Now, you'll find all of the techshow staples here. Robo vacuums and lawnmowers check. Flying car check. Not actually flying. . . Buzzer. . Check. Loads and loads and loads of screens check, check, check. Massagers for the whole body, orjust the ankles. . . Quivering: er. . . Now, although this is overwhelmingly a home appliance show, even if you are not wowed by white goods, there are still some very interesting innovations here. Just making myself a water smoothie at the moment. But here's a question for you. Where is this food processor getting its powerfrom? look, no cables. It's getting the electricity from the induction hob. What?! we're getting used to induction hobs in kitchens, where the hob doesn't generate heat, it generates electromagnetic waves, which causes the metal on the bottom of the pan to heat up. We're also getting used to wirelesscharging our devices, so you just pop it down on a pad and it sucks up the electricity and charges the battery. Well, this is a combination of the two. We're starting to see the arrival of more powerful kitchen gadgets which can suck their electricity up from the induction hob. Now, it needs to be a bit smart. The hob needs to know which device is on which hob so it can do the right thing. But apart from that, it sounds like a pretty decent idea to me. Anyone for a cuppa? this is a special year for ifa. Believe it or not, it's 100 years old. Now, the first few shows concentrated on the emerging luxury technology of the day the radio. Radio tunes in and out it is crazy to think that there was a technology expo of sorts here 100 years ago, and it did become a big deal. Back in 1930, it was opened by none other than albert einstein. The radio, and wireless technology in general, has been the springboard for so many of our modern devices, and there's certainly no shortage of new things to get excited about here. Here's an interesting phone. It's from tcl, and it's using tcl*s nxtpaper display technology, which means you have this matte finish. It's not a reflective screen at all. Erm, and it's designed to be easier on the eye. But when you flick this switch here, it goes into full epaper simulation mode. So it really does look like an e ink display that you'd find on your ebook reader. It's not epaper, it's still an lcd display, but, with the matte finish, it certainly is easy on the eye. First thing you notice is, the battery life has shot up to about 132 hours because it's not using wallpaper or anything like the processing power it has before. Most of the apps work, including, weirdly, youtube, on epaper. And from new handhelds to new laptops. This is honor*s new magicbook art 1a. It's an armbased laptop, and the first one that i've seen that keeps its webcam in a little pocket. You pop it out the side, magnet it on the top, and there's your webcam, only when you need it. He laughs but how do you grab attention at a big tech show like ifa? how do you stand out from the crowd? well, one way to promote, for example, your new portable printer for phone photos is to associate yourself with a cultural phenomenon that is guaranteed to turn heads. Of course, serious journalists like me would never be fooled by such tactics. The thing is, though, consumer electronics is a serious business. There is serious money involved, and shows like this have to take things incredibly seriously. And it's never a given that they'll remain relevant in the future. We watch announcements online these days, we do business remotely, and we don't want to travel as much. Ifa has yet another new ceo this year, and he's tasked with trying to keep the event in the headlines. How hard is it to organise and run a big tech show like ifa? it feels like you start to fly, but you build the plane within the flight. It's something like that. Yeah, yeah. Because you cannot wait. There are so many deadlines you had to follow. If you don't follow, there's a chain reaction. But nevertheless, we embrace the challenge. And we had a real. . . We're a new team and, you know, we are in berlin. Berlin is special. Ifa is special. Everything is a little bit crazx _ as we move into the future, which, by the look of this montage, feels pretty dystopian, what with the clockwork orange, robocop doing cycle crunches, and donnie darko in a space helmet. The new ifa boss says he wants to make the show a more citywide cultural event, attracting younger people, and perhaps broadening out beyond just straightup tech, a lot like the annual south by southwest festival does in texas, combining, as it does, tech with film, music and art. So, many things to change because we cannot wait. This year is the starting point, _ getting more in the direction that we are more innovative and getting even bigger. Being the most important technological show in the world. Would you say ifa is different this year? and would you say that it's going to be different from now on? everything that you feel with ifa is totally different. Why? because we want to give a visual signal to everybody that there is a change. Ifa is getting younger, more innovative, front of the wave of trends, and we are more a cultural event than a typical tech show. One thing that's changed is the name. It's still ifa, but it doesn't stand for internationale funkausstellung any more. No, these days it's innovation for all. Another thing that's changed is that al, something that's supposedly been in everything here for years, might now really be able to make our homes smarter. It goes from room to room and controls appliances. And iot devices. Not only is there this continuing promise that our devices will learn our habits and make our lives more efficient, but with the arrival of large language models like chatgpt, we might finally get that home assistant that we can have an actual conversation with. Hey, ballie, can you show me the status of the devices in the house? assistant: sure, iwill show. You the status in 3d map view. But neither lg's nor samsung's anklehigh home help bots have been released yet, and i do find myself wondering which one i'll trip over first. Talking of which, samsung has by far the biggest presence here, with an entire hall dedicated to many of the big themes of the day, including sustainability, with its energy monitoring system, wearables, with rings that put your house to sleep when you drift off, and accessibility, with tv displays that allow for viewers of differing levels of eyesight. Keeping highprofile names like these interested and happy to keep coming back is one of the challenges big shows like ifa will continue to face. You'll find many of the massive household names here at ifa, but also this show has its fair share of tiny startups, which may have had the next big idea. I'll show you some of those later. But what does it take to be an entrepreneur and develop that idea into something that could change the world? well, in sweden, alistair keen has been to meet two brothers who formed a company called plasticfri. Hi, how are you doing? good, thanks. And you? good, thank you, yeah. Nice to meet you. Likewise. What's the biggest risk you've taken? i would say to be an entrepreneur, maybe. He laughs the biggest risk of my life. But at the same time, the sweetest risk of my life. Plasticfri is a green tech company based here in sweden. We have developed a breakthrough technology, which is based on the multistep processes, in order to develop i and offer ecofriendly and plantbased alternative to plastics _ this is one of the products that we have developed a paper cup which is not like the other paper cups in the market, because there is no plastic film inside, and it is also certified recyclable as paper. Normal paper cup has a film inside, and this film is made of plastic. So imagine when you are drinking a coffee. Like, any time that you sip, you are bringing microplastics into your body. And what we achieve with our plasticfree paper cup is that we eliminate completely that film in order to protect the paper there and be separated from the liquid inside. So, basically, in thisjar, we have some examples of the plantbased resourcesl that we are using. It is agricultural waste. It is nonedible plants. It is also partly wood fibre. It is even some leaves that we see here. Some of these plants, we use and extract the ingredients i that we need in order to create our base raw material. When you have the agricultural waste and nonedible plants and wood fibre, then we extract the ingredients that we would need in our processes. . When you have the extraction, you have a mixing process, then it goes through fermentation, and then you have several steps of the process in order to convert that to an end product like this. I lots of us have been there with a paper straw, where, halfway through the drink, it goes mushy and we can't finish the product. What's different about your straw? so, if we look at the normal paper straws, the way they are being manufactured is that l you roll a piece of paper, you dip them to a glue bath, and then you take them up, you let them dry. _ and the reason that they get soggy is that when you put them into yourdrinks, the glue actually is dissolved into your drink. _ with our technology which is the same for the cups, bags, i ecommerce mailers, and the straw we eliminate completely the glue _ we only use heat and pressure. Costwise, how does it compare to a traditional plastic bag? yeah, so, plastic industry has been around for tens of years now, quite a well established industry, and it is obvious that it will be cheap. Our technology is very, very highly scalable, which means that, in large volumes, we can be competitive in pricing with the traditional plastics. Any time that we talk about sustainability, environmentally friendly, automatically, people think about, oh, yeah, we have to pay more. As a consumer, we want to shift that change as well in order to offer premium products at a nonpremium pricing. You guys have a lot of passion for what you're doing, built on your childhood and built on your surroundings. Give us a sense of how much you're putting into this startup. Within the past five, six years, we've been working at least 100 hours per week, which is an insane amount of work. I but that's also connected to the passion, _ because we think the negative effect of plastic pollution. On human beings, on the whole ecosystem, it has gone too far. I can't imagine working with any of my siblings as closely as you two work together, let alone having a business. How do you manage that relationship? of course, as human beings, we are different. There are ups and downs in the world of siblings as well. But what makes a team quite as strong is really these different opinions. If we think the same, then we don't have a panoramic view of the strategy. There can be conflicts, but this is part of the game. What we want to achieve is that, actually, to remove more than 10 billion plastic articles by 2026. So we're expanding very fast because we know the time is quite short and we cannot wait for tomorrow. We need to take action today. Time for a look at this week? tech nears. It is notjust in berlin that new products have been popping up. On monday apple launched its latest iphone. It comes in a new range of colours and has a new camera button. The big news as it runs apple intelligence, a company's new ai. Apple intelligence will change the way users edit photos and respond to messages. The new phone comes with more powerful chips and enhance privacy features. Sony has confirmed it is to launch a more powerful and much more expensive version of its hugely popular playstation five console. The ps five pro will be able to show more advanced graphics and display the most demanding games at higher more consistent frame rates. But the added power comes at a cost, in factjust over $900, just under 700. It will launch in sony's major territories on 7 november. Finally, scientist at the max planck institute for intelligent systems and a team at zurich have developed a robotic leg powered by artificial muscles made by oilfield plastic bags that resemble everyday freezer packs. Two muscles composed of four oilfield bags are partially covered on each side with electrode patches and when it is time to begin leaping, the team starts shocking. Time for a bit of music. I've come to london's maida vale studios, where many really famous artists have performed, to see one of the uk's upandcoming bands play live. This is strange, though. Where is everyone? at the moment, it looks like noone's in the venue, it looks like noone has arrived to see the show, but i think someone is about to arrive. Hopefully a whole crowd. In fact, there is no other real life audience for this show. Radio 1's new music portal. And don't worry if you're listening to the radio, it's fine. You just hear it like a normal gig. # like the back of my car on a sunny day # you're the song on the radio i never play. . . # good neighbours are behind me, performing live on radio 1, but i'm alsojoining them virtually here. I can move all around the virtual stage. I can get a front row position. My avatar, beat engineer there, is ready to dance. I've got some moves! a bit of cheering. There we go. My finest dance moves. This performance, a radio1 live lounge, is being simultaneously turned into an interactive 3d virtual event, one that anyone canjoin on their laptop or mobile device. It's part of a joint ventur