iPhone 8 review

The Good The iPhone 8 offers wireless charging, lightning-fast performance and small but solid upgrades to its camera, screen and speakers. Its starting storage size is a roomy 64GB, double that of the iPhone 7.

The Bad This phone has the same pedestrian design, missing headphone jack and battery life as the iPhone 7 -- and no dual camera either. The iPhone 8 costs a bit more than baseline new iPhones in years past, and comes only in black, silver and a new shade of gold.

The Bottom Line The sensible, speedy iPhone 8 makes a nice upgrade to the iPhone 6S and earlier siblings, but we won't know until November how it compares to the much pricier iPhone X.

CNET Editors' Rating
Design 8.0
Features 8.0
Performance 9.0
Camera 8.0
Battery 9.0

On Nov. 3,  Apple will roll out its seductive sports car of a phone: the all-new, totally redesigned, edgy, giant-screened iPhone X.

In the meantime, the iPhone 8 ($849.00 at Apple) and 8 Plus -- the practical crossover and supersized SUV of the 2017 Apple phone line -- have pulled into the lot. They're here and available, and suddenly your iPhone purchase decision is wildly confusing.

So why buy an iPhone 8 when that sexy iPhone X is just around the corner? The 8 is last year's design with this year's technology. It feels familiar. It's a safe pick. It's a "let's not spend a thousand dollars on an iPhone" iPhone. It's a "Touch ID and a home button matter more to me than a leap of faith into the world of Face ID" iPhone.

iPhone 8
Same feel, pretty much. You OK with that?
Sarah Tew/CNET
Make no mistake: The iPhone 8 is essentially the "iPhone 7S." Apple saved the cool features and radical new design for the iPhone X, which costs 43 percent more -- $999, £999 or AU$1,579 to start. And if you want the truly impressive dual camera, with portrait mode and 2x optical zoom -- both seriously nice step-ups -- you'll need to invest in the much larger iPhone 8 Plus ($981.00 at Amazon.com), or wait for that eventual X. It's a different approach than Samsung, which made its whole line of Galaxy S8 and Note 8 phones look new, but not too dissimilar from Google's take on the Pixel 2 phones. With the iPhone, new looks only come at the top end.

That X is tempting indeed, but my only real-world experience with the device is the brief time I spent with it at Apple's Sept. 12 launch event. Until I can eventually get one and put it through its paces, I strongly recommend that you refrain from buying any phone whatsoever.

But if you need a phone right now, or if you have no desire to pay the iPhone X premium, let's talk practical considerations.


2017 iPhone pricing (64GB, 256GB)

                   US             UK             Australia
iPhone 8 $699, $849 £699, £849 AU$1,079, AU$1,329
iPhone 8 Plus $799, $949 £799, £949 AU$1,229, AU$1,479
iPhone X $999, $1,149 £999, £1,149 AU$1,579, AU$1,829

The iPhone 8's best feature is its processor, a fast new six-core A11 Bionic chip, similar to the processor in the iPhone X and 8 Plus. Thanks to an all-new image sensor, photo quality has improved in low light, as has video quality. The iPhone 8 adds an improved iPad-style True Tone screen, and the speakers sound nice and loud. All the new iPhones include wireless charging now, thanks to a glass back.

If you have an iPhone 7, you'll find the faster speed, better screen and better camera on the iPhone 8 "nice to have," but short of "must-buy" territory -- unless you're particularly enamored with the wireless charging Android owners have enjoyed for years.

For anyone with an iPhone 6S ($595.00 at Amazon.com) or previous model, however, the benefits of jumping to an iPhone 8 ramp up dramatically. The speed, screen, audio and camera improvements will feel significant, and you'll get nice upgrades you missed when you skipped the iPhone 7, including water resistance.

So, yeah: That iPhone X may look great in the showroom window. But ultimately, you're driving off the lot with the practical four-door crossover. It's more affordable. It gets perfectly decent gas mileage. But it still has the same nice high-end navigation package, entertainment system and fuel-injected engine as that sweet low-slung coupe. Not too shabby.

That's the iPhone 8. The baseline 2017 iPhone remains a top-tier smartphone -- a seriously good phone. Just don't expect it to turn heads.

iPhone 8
Look, it's your $700, but we haven't reviewed the X yet.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Do you wait for the iPhone X? (Yes)
The X is compact -- it's got a 5.8-inch screen in a body that's taller but barely wider than the 8 -- and it feels great. Its dual cameras should be at least as good as those on the excellent iPhone 8 Plus. It has a weird 3D-mapping front camera array housed in a notch above the screen, a design compromise some iPhone purists find maddening. It uses your face to pay for things. And we have yet to see how its Face ID tech compares to Touch ID in real-world testing.

If any of that sounds attractive to you -- or if you're willing to pay a huge premium for "the best iPhone" -- you should wait until November.


If you don't care about that stuff, or if you just can't see yourself paying $1,000 for a phone, the iPhone 8 is fine. Yes, it's basically what we were calling it all year: the "iPhone 7S." But S phones are often the best values, and the iPhone 8 is no exception. It's a better iPhone that looks the same.

Editors' note, Sept. 25: Updated with battery benchmarks and phone durability drop test results. 

iPhone 8
Mophie's wireless charging mat will work with 7.5W faster iPhone 8 charging later this year.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Wireless charging: Cool, but BYO and slow (for now)
The iPhone 8 comes with a Lightning cable and plug, but it works with the existing Qi wireless charging standard. That means there are already many affordable third-party chargers on the market, and many public places -- like McDonald's, for instance -- already have counters with Qi-compatible chargers built-in.

Apple doesn't have its own wireless charge base at all, at least not yet: AirPower arrives next year, a mat that charges the new iPhones, the Apple Watch Series 3 and AirPods ($229.00 at Amazon Marketplace) with a new charge case. In the meantime, Apple recommends Belkin and Mophie chargers that will charge the iPhone faster when it's updated to allow 7.5W wireless charging via an update later this year. A test unit of Mophie's new charger worked fine for me: It has a circular, rubberized base but has its own specialized charge cord (you can't use Micro-USB, USB-C or Lightning with it).

For now, wireless charging is slow. Half an hour with Mophie's charger delivered about a 15 percent uptick in battery. It's intended for overnight charging, with a Lightning cable still the faster way to charge the iPhone 8. If you want faster still, spring for a separate higher-wattage MacBook charger -- and, of course, the USB-C-to-Lightning cable, sold separately. The new iPhones will charge up to 50 percent in half an hour this way, but not with included chargers. (Stay tuned for more testing.)

Still, now that Apple's on board with an existing standard -- Samsung and others have long supported Qi -- wireless charging looks to finally become a universal convenience. Starbucks has already pledged to make its existing wireless chargers iPhone compatible, and there are plenty of Qi chargers available on Amazon for as little as $20 in the US.

Apple claims that the iPhone 8's battery will last about as long as the iPhone 7's does. In our first days with the device, that has matched up with our anecdotal experience. Keep in mind that the similar-size iPhone X promises up to 2 hours more battery life than the 8 -- similar to the battery life you'll get with the 8 Plus.


Sarah Tew/CNET
Better camera, but not dual cameras
The iPhone 8 doesn't get a dual camera like the 8 Plus and the iPhone X, and that's a shame. But its photos and videos do look improved.

This time around, the front and rear cameras get better mostly via new sensors and a new image signal processor. While low light shots do look nicer, and shutter speed and focus seem a bit faster, I didn't see enough of a change from the iPhone 7 to astonish me, but the photos I took all looked really, really good. The 8's camera still lacks the clever Portrait effects of the 7 Plus ($998.11 at Amazon.com) and 8 Plus, and telephoto lens (2x optical zoom) found on those phones, too.

iphone8-test-1
Enlarge Image
Automatic settings at an art fair. (Art by Primitive Twig.)
Scott Stein/CNET
This phone also now shoots 60fps, 4K video and 240fps, 1080p slow-mo, and those video changes make a difference for serious video work. But if you're buying an iPhone as a camera for professional use, you owe it to yourself to get the iPhone 8 Plus. Or, wait to see how the iPhone X performs -- its front and rear cameras, on paper, are even better than the 8 Plus.


Sarah Tew/CNET
Design: Old-school, but fine
When the iPhone 6 ($383.99 at Amazon.com) debuted, its screen size and design made big waves. But that was 2014. Much like with the MacBook Air or iPads, Apple has locked in the design one more time here, but with a construction facelift. A return to a glass back, the first since the iPhone 4S back in 2011, enables more than just aesthetics: that's what allows the aforementioned wireless charging to work. The phone feels good, though, kind of like last year's Pixel ($599.99 at Amazon.com), with a similar grippiness to the matte black iPhone 7. The glass actually makes it feel less slippery.


Best iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus cases
Color options have shrunk to space gray, silver and gold. I'm testing the silver model, and it's mostly white with silver aluminum touches. Gold looks a creamy blush-pink with gold metal highlights -- more toward the older rose gold than "true gold" end of the scale. Space gray is very close to what was just "black" on the iPhone 7. The good news is that most iPhone 7 cases will work on the 8, so long as they have a bit of flexibility. (The iPhone 8 is a fraction of a millimeter bigger than the 7 all around.)

It's not shatterproof
Apple says the glass in the new iPhones is 50 percent more durable than last year's iPhone 7 glass, with impact and scratch improvements and steel frame reinforcements (and more durable aluminum). It's hard to tell how impact-proof these phones will be in practice because Apple won't make any specific claims.

Leaked 'OnePlus 5T' pic hits the web

Ready for a OnePlus 5 upgrade? OnePlus might be.

Only four months since releasing the phone -- to a rave CNET review, no less -- an image purporting to show the OnePlus 5T was leaked to Android Authority. It's unconfirmed, but if it's true, it could give us a clue about how the upcoming phone might look.

The photo depicts a device with thinner bezels than the OnePlus 5 and no fingerprint scanner below the display, in a departure from previous OnePlus designs. The report also brings attention to the screen, speculating that the 5T could have a larger 6-inch display with a 2K resolution and a 18:9 aspect ratio.

A midyear update would fall into OnePlus' update cycle from 2016. Last November OnePlus released the 3T, a revamped version of the OnePlus 3 that came out June 2016 (there was no OnePlus 4). The 3T got a few improvements over the 3, including longer battery life, a better camera and a newer processor. Now it seems as though the OnePlus 5 is getting the same treatment.


Rumors of the 5T were stoked when people realized that the OnePlus 5 was unavailable on OnePlus' website. Since the only way to buy OnePlus' phones in most countries is through the company's own site, it seemed strange for the device to be unavailable -- especially only four months after the phone's release.

Meanwhile, other potential images of the 5T have popped up on Chinese social media site Weibo, adding fuel to the fire.

OnePlus did not respond to a request for comment.

Are you hoping the OnePlus 5 gets an upgrade? Stay tuned to CNET as more reports surface.

Apple acquires wireless-charging firm PowerbyProxi

The New Zealand-based company designs wireless charging systems that can be adapted and integrated into other products.

Apple is beefing up its wireless-charging ambitions.

The tech giant recently acquired PowerbyProxi, a designer of wireless-charging systems, Apple said Tuesday, confirming an earlier report by New Zealand website Stuff. Financial terms of the transaction weren't revealed.

Dan Riccio, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, called the acquisition a "great addition as Apple works to create a wireless future," according to Stuff. "We want to bring truly effortless charging to more places and more customers around the world," he added.

The acquisition comes after Apple jumped into the wireless-charging fray last month with the introduction of the new iPhone X, iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus. The iPhones use the same Qi wireless-power standard as Samsung's Galaxy devices.

New Zealand-based PowerbyProxi was founded in 2007 to develop technology that would let people charge smartphones and other devices without having to plug them in to a power source. One of the company's products is Proxi-Module, a modular wireless-power system that can be adapted and integrated into other products.

The company will remain in Auckland, New Zealand, Apple said in a statement.

PowerbyProxi couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

The Smartest Stuff: Innovators are thinking up new ways to make you, and the things around you, smarter.

iHate: CNET looks at how intolerance is taking over the internet.

EXERCISE THE RIGHT TO DIET!

There are two sides to every fad! At some point or the other, fitness buffs argue about the do’s and don’ts of their fitness regimen. And the crux of the argument lies in — To diet or to exercise? Some are at the helm of the fitness craze and we asked them what they thought was the way forward. Whether it’s only diet or only exercise or both diet and exercise that works for them. While experts claim that in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, a combination of both diet and exercise is needed, but people seem to have their own take on how to stay toned! Every big city is filled with places to dine out. Resisting the temptation of indulging in some soul food can be quite a struggle. Some foodies think by cutting down on portions, and by exercising one can maintain fitness goals. Ronith Babu, a foodie says, “People tend to do a combination of both exercising and dieting. The human body needs at least an hour of exercise a day. Results can be slower when you exercise without cutting down on food. Exercise can be physical activity like dance, cycling, swimming etc. I think one should cut down on the amount of food rather than cutting things out entirely.”

Since diet and exercise should go hand in hand, various factors that are out of our hands can come into play, for instance, a lack of time might make one only exercise or only diet Lincy Aravind, a mother of two feels. “Although diet and exercise are the best way to keep fit, going to gym to stay fit is not possible for me. Around friends or family, or during festivals, I tend to indulge. But on other days, I maintain a balanced diet of fresh juices, green salads, protein rich foods like soya, tofu etc. Even though it’s not much, I try to get in little exercise thanks to house chores, running around with my kids and sometimes cycling to get groceries,” she says.

There are others who maintain a strict gym/exercise regime as the sole focus to attain their ideal weight. Neomi Stringer, a professional and fitness fanatic says, “It’s nearly impossible to out run your fork. I ensure to keep energy levels up throughout the day. Finishing an early shift, I head straight to the gym.”

Experts feels that exercising needs to be combined with a gym routine in order to stay healthy. Jaisson Jagadeeshwaran, a gym trainer advises, “Good nutrition combined with physical activity can help one reach ideal weight, and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. Weight loss can be achieved with a combination of a healthy diet and all-rounded exercise. Exercise is needed to lead a healthy lifestyle but does not necessarily lead to weight loss. Calorie control is more successful since exercise also tends to increase appetite.” Ryan Fernando, a nutritionist believes that, “When a person takes up physical activity and a diet, they need to go hand in hand with each other. Experts say that 70 per cent nutrition and 30 per cent exercise is needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Many don’t work on nutrition, and believe exercise can compromise or hold you off from paying your dues. A person needs six (small) meals a day for greater impact than just an hour of exercise. In my opinion, a diet is actually negative, as it takes in less calories than the requirement of the body. I advise people to learn to eat scientifically and to eat to their capacity.”

Astronomy’s new wave

Some 130m years ago, in a galaxy far away, the smouldering cores of two collapsed stars smashed into each other. The resulting explosion sent a burst of gamma rays streaming through space and rippled the fabric of the universe. On 17 August, those signals reached Earth – and sparked an astronomy revolution.

The collision created a “kilonova”, an astronomical marvel that scientists have never seen before. It was the first cosmic event to be witnessed via both traditional telescopes, which can observe electromagnetic radiation like gamma rays, and gravitational wave detectors, which sense the wrinkles in space-time produced by distant cataclysms. The detection, which involved thousands of researchers working at more than 70 laboratories and telescopes on every continent, heralds a new era in space research known as “multimessenger astrophysics”.

“It’s transformational,” said Julie McEnery, an astrophysicist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who was involved in the effort. “The era of gravitational wave astrophysics had dawned, but now it’s come of age … We’re able to combine dramatically different ways of viewing the universe, and I think our level of understanding is going to leap forward as a result.”

The existence of gravitational waves was first theorised by Albert Einstein a century ago. But scientists had never sensed the waves until 2015, when a ripple produced by the merger of two distant black holes was picked up by two facilities of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (Ligo) in Louisiana and Washington state. Since then, the collaboration has identified three more black hole collisions and has brought on a third gravitational wave detector near Pisa, Italy, to better pinpoint the sources of these distortions in space-time. This month members of the Ligo team were awarded the Nobel prize in physics.

Yet because black holes emit no light or heat, past gravitational wave detections could not be paired with observations by conventional telescopes, which collect signals from what’s known as the electromagnetic spectrum. The scientists at Ligo and its European counterpart, Virgo, hoped to detect gravitational waves from a visible event, such as a binary star merger or a kilonova.

Kilonovas are swift, brilliant explosions that occur during the merger of neutron stars, which are ultradense remnants of collapsed stars that are composed almost entirely of neutrons.

Collisions between neutron stars are thought to be 1,000 times brighter than a typical nova, and they are the universe’s primary source of such elements as silver, platinum and gold. But much like gravitational waves, kilonovas have long been strictly theoretical. Until this summer.

At 8.41am Eastern time on 17 August, a gravitational wave hit the Virgo detector in Italy and, 22 milliseconds later, set off the Ligo detector in Livingston, Louisiana. Three milliseconds after that, the distortion reached Hanford, Washington.

Ligo detects black hole mergers as quick chirps that last a fraction of a second. This signal lasted for 100 seconds, and it vibrated at higher frequencies. From the smaller amplitude of the signal, the researchers could tell this event involved less mass than the previously observed black hole collisions.

“When we detected this event, my feeling was, wow, we have hit the motherlode,” said Laura Cadonati, an astrophysicist at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Ligo representative.

Just 1.7 seconds after the initial gravitational wave detection, Nasa’s Fermi space telescope registered a brief flash of gamma radiation coming from the constellation Hydra. Half an hour later, McEnery, the telescope’s project scientist, got an email from a colleague with the subject line, “WAKE UP”.

“It said, ‘This gamma ray burst has an interesting friend … Buckle up,’” McEnery recalled.

Gamma ray bursts are the most energetic forms of light in the cosmos. Scientists had long predicted that a short burst would be associated with a neutron star merger. That violent collision shoots jets of radioactive matter into space, as though someone had smashed their palm on a tube of toothpaste with holes at both ends. “We were beside ourselves,” McEnery said. Scientists raced to find the signal’s source before it vanished from the always expanding universe. “It is the classic challenge of finding a needle in a haystack, with the added complication that the needle is fading away and the haystack is moving,” said astrophysicist Marcelle Soares-Santos of Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

Gravitational waves travel at light speed. “Einstein predicts that gravity and photons move at the same speed … and [the signals] arrived within two seconds of each other, dramatically confirming that Einstein’s prediction is right,” McEnery said at a news conference last week.

Meanwhile, trigger alerts had gone out to Ligo collaborators at dozens of observatories around the globe. Ligo gave astronomers a narrow map of the

The detection involved thousands of researchers working at more than 70 labs and telescopes

sky to hunt for cosmic violence. “It was critical to know where to look,” said Edo Berger of Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics. “If we were just searching blindly across the whole sky I don’t think we would have seen it.”

At Penn State University, phones began buzzing during a science operations team meeting for Nasa’s Swift satellite. From low Earth orbit, the Swift satellite cycled through 750 points in the sky until it detected “a vast avalanche of data” in the form of ultraviolet rays coming from the neutron star merger. They were just in time: the UV emission disappeared in less than 24 hours.

Ryan Foley, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz, was walking around an amusement park when he got the urgent text from one of his collaborators. He abandoned his partner in front of the carousel, jumped on a bike and pedalled back to his office.

He and his colleagues stayed up all night, first waiting for the sun to set on their telescope in Chile, then sorting through the telescope’s images in search of a “transient” – a new object in the sky.

In the ninth image, postdoctoral researcher Charlie Kilpatrick saw it: a tiny new dot beside a galaxy known as NGC 4993, 130m light years away.

He notified the group through the messaging service Slack: “@foley found something; sending you a screenshot”.

Foley marvelled at Kilpatrick’s measured tone in those messages. “Charlie is the first person, as far as we know, the first human to have ever seen optical photons from a gravitational wave event,” he said.

The event was named for the telescope that found it: Swope Supernova Survey 2017a.

Researchers collected data from the kilonova in every part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In the early hours the explosion appeared blue and featureless – the light signature of a very young, very hot new celestial body. But unlike supernovas, which can linger in the sky for months, the explosion turned red and faded. By separating light from the collision into its component parts, scientists could distinguish the signals of heavy elements like silver and gold.

For millennia the two dead stars circled each other approaching the speed of light, shaking off gravitational waves, which in turn pulled them closer together. When the husks smashed together, dinosaurs walked the planet. The shock wave from the collision finally reached Earth in August.

Scientists don’t know what happened in the wake of the explosion. Neutron stars are too faint to be seen from so far away, so researchers can’t tell if the merger produced one large neutron star, or if the bodies collapsed to form a black hole.

But after two months of analysis, the collaborators were ready to inform the world about what they have so far. Their results were announced last week in more than a dozen papers in the journals Nature, Science and the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

This kilonova was so bright that it could have been observed even by amateurs with tiny telescopes. In the future, Ligo will alert the whole world to potential detectors, allowing citizen scientists to join in the global search.

France Córdova, director of the National Science Foundation, which funds Ligo, compared traditional, visual astronomy to a silent film. The earliest gravitational wave detections added sound, but they were little more than strange noises echoing in the dark, she said. “We couldn’t pinpoint the location of the source.”

Now, for the first time, the soundtrack of the cosmos has synced up with what scientists can see.

“It’s really a triumph of science,” Foley said. “We as a civilisation have essentially been confined to the Earth, and almost all the information we’ve ever received from the universe has been through light. Yet we were able to predict … things as extreme as two neutron stars colliding when even the idea of neutron stars is incredible.”

How everyday food can cure your ailments

Broccoli for arthritis

This vegetable is an “arthritis-fighting champion”, says Lynne McTaggart, author of Arthritis – Drug Free Alternatives to Prevent and Reverse Arthritis.

“Sulforaphane, a compound in the vegetable, slows the destruction of joint cartilage by blocking enzymes and interfering with the inflammatory processes associated with osteoarthritis.”

Researchers from the University of East Anglia found eating a handful every day might prevent the disease or slow its progress once it’s been diagnosed.

Dark chocolate for mood

The darker the chocolate, the better. Findings published in the journal Nutritional Neuroscience suggest that chocolate can not only boost mood but can even help reduce the symptoms of depression because it increases levels of several mood-boosting brain chemicals.

Mushrooms for colds

Mushrooms contain more of an immuneboosting antioxidant called ergothioneine – which can help to ward off colds and other viruses – than any other food, say researchers at Pennsylvania State University.

In fact, button mushrooms contain 12 times more of this powerful property than wheatgerm and four times more than chicken liver – the next richest sources.

...And chicken soup!

The old wives tale is true. Research reported in the American Journal of Therapeutics found that carnosine – present in chicken soup – could help the immune system fight off the flu virus in its early stages. Slurping hot, steamy soup also helps to clear congestion.

Cinnamon for travel sickness

“Added to a snack or meal, cinnamon has an antimicrobial action that helps with digestion, calms stomach muscles and also helps prevent motion sickness,” says Shona Wilkinson, nutritionist at SuperfoodUK.com

Watermelon to boost libido

“Watermelon is packed with the phyto-nutrient citrulline which increases the body’s level of nitric oxide,” explains Shona. “In turn, this relaxes blood vessels and increases blood circulation. These two elements combined, can decrease the amount of time it takes to become aroused.”

Spinach for period pain

“Women with diets high in plant foods, such as spinach and kale, have fewer painful periods because these foods are rich in magnesium,” says Linda Booth, digestive health expert and advisor to Pink Parcel (www.pinkparcel.co.uk).

“A deficiency in this vital mineral can cause spasms in the uterus and in the smooth muscle tissue of the bowel, contributing to period pain and constipation.”

Sage for hot flushes

This garden herb has traditionally been used to relieve hot flushes, says Alison Cullen, nutritionist at A. Vogel (www. avogel.co.uk).

“Research shows sage somehow interacts with the hypothalamus – the control unit of temperature regulation in your brain. It can be taken either

during the day to help reduce daytime flushes or before bed if night sweats disrupt your sleep.” (A Vogel Menoforce – £12.9 99 for 30 tablets from Boots).

Marmite to prevent dementia

Resarchers from the University of York found the high concentration of Vitamin B12 in the yeast extract increases levels of chemicals in the brain which are thought to protect against neurological disorders. Participants who ate a teaspoon of Marmite per day were found to have increased levels of a neurotransmitter known as GABA, said to calm the brain and soothe the effects of anxiety – with the effects still present eight weeks later, suggesting Marmite could have a long-term impact on the body.

Pineapple for pain

This fruit has a powerful antiinflammatory effect – offering pain relief from conditions like arthritis. “Pineapples contain an enzyme called bromelain which has antiinflammatory activity and has found some success in relieving joint paint and osteoarthritis,” says Shona.

Manuka honey for skin

“Skin care products that contain certain ingredients, like sodium lauryl sulfate, can cause eczema to flare up,” warns Sally Temple Nuffield Health Nutritional Therapist. “Manuka honey can be a helpful alternative because it naturally contains antibacterial, antifungal and antiseptic properties. “Either eat a small amount each day or apply it to the skin.”

Cherry juice for better sleep

Sports Nutritionist, Anita Bean, says: “Cherries are powerhouses of nutrients, packed with vitamins, minerals, fibre and phytonutrients.” They also contain melatonin, a hormone that helps regulate our sleep patterns.

Researchers found that drinking tart cherry juice (tart cherries contain more melatonin than sweet cherries) 30 minutes after waking and 30 minutes before the evening meal boosted sleep time by 84 minutes and improved sleep quality in people with insomnia.

Blueberries for memory

“Blueberries may boost learning and memory due to the high levels of flavonoids, in particular anthocyanins, they contain. These are thought to protect against oxidative stress (free radical damage) in the brain,” explains Shona.

Celery for immunity

A rich source of flavonoids including zeaxanthin, lutein, and betacarotene, celery reduces inflammation and enhances the immune system, explains nutritionist Libby Limon (www. libbylimoncom).

“It supports the gut flora with prebiotics and can enhance and mobilise the body’s infection fighting white blood cells.”

Artichokes for cholesterol

Artichokes are extremely high in antioxidants, says Alison. In studies, patients with high cholesterol given artichoke leaf extract achieved a 10% reduction in ‘bad’ LDL cholesterol.

Onions for fighting infections

Onions, like garlic, contain allicin which is a powerful natural antibiotic and has also been found to protect the circulatory system. They’re effective for colds, flu, chest, stomach and urinary infections, and have even been known to help with arthritis, rheumatism and gout, says naturopath Michael van Straten, author of a series of Superfood books. They also contain a compound called quercetin, which promotes ‘good’ cholesterol and may have cancer-fighting properties.

Herbs and spices for memory

Saffron, nutmeg, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, vanilla, peppermint, basil and parsley all contain stimulating substances that boost bloodflow to the brain. Sage, in particular, can help boost memory, say researchers from the Medicinal Plant Research Centre.

Kiwi fruit for vision

A surprisingly good source of lutein – an antioxidant commonly found in eggs and dark green vegetables – that protects against impaired vision. Research reported in the British Journal of Ophthalmology has found that eating lutein-rich foods can lower the incidence of eye diseases such as cataracts and macular degeneration (a breakdown of the central portion of the retina) – the most common cause of poor sight in older people in the UK.

Cherries for gout

US researchers have found that the natural compounds in fresh cherries significantly reduce bodily chemicals which cause joint inflammation and pain. Blood levels of urate – which accumulates in the joints causing gout – plummeted five hours after eating. And contributory chemicals responsible for joint inflammation also decreased after a breakfast of 45 cherries.

Watercress to fight breast cancer

Containing over 50 vital vitamins and minerals, gram for gram watercress has more calcium than milk, more Vitamin C than oranges, more Vitamin E than broccoli and more folate than bananas. In fact, medical research is investigating how a plant compound found in watercress – PEITC (phenethyl isothiocyanate) – may have the ability to suppress breast cancer cell development by ‘turning off’ a signal in the body and thereby starving the growing tumour of essential blood and oxygen.

Dress to IMPRESS

The Nubia M2 is a case of great hardware design let down by poor software and unfortunate pricing

You know what they say about first impressions. When you first lay eyes on the Nubia M2, it is hard not to appreciate it on some level. Unboxing it to see the sleek black pane of glass with gold accents on the sides and a hint of red around the camera and below the display, you can tell that some thought went into its design. This is a phone that makes you notice it, and want to like it.

The specsheet is no joke either. The M2 comes with a 5.5-inch AMOLED display panel, a respectable Snapdragon 625 processor, which is known to perform well with 1080p displays like the one on this phone, 4GB RAM, 64GB onboard storage and a beefy 3,630mAh battery to back it all up. So far so good.

Turn it on, and the phone displays a large canvas of bright image thumbnails — hinting at its camera prowess — as it’s got a dual 13MP camera setup at the back and a 16megapixel front-facing sensor.

Interface experience

Unfortunately for this phone that we really wanted to like, this is where things begin to go downhill. Nowadays, most users — and even manufacturers — have realised that keeping Android close to stock form is usually preferred, with add-ons inserted only if they really make a difference. Nubia did not get this memo, and saddled this otherwise great-looking phone with its clunky Nubia UI V4.0. The smaller issue here is that this UI is baked on top of the ageing Android 6.0.1 with the security patch last updated in March, with no updates available as of writing. The larger one is that Nubia UI seems a little unpolished. Sure, there’s enough added functionality to make Samsung’s TouchWiz from five years back look underpopulated, but even most of these features don’t seem to solve any real problems. The UI offers edge-based gestures for everything from app switching to reducing screen brightness, but the phone’s regular, non-curvy screen makes using them a difficult feat to accomplish. For example, double-clicking the narrow left edge takes you back one screen, which feels more convoluted than just using the traditional, and swappable, back key below the display. The point here is, in an age where phone UIs are about intuitive interactions, learning these extra features feels more like mastering your favourite fighting video game character’s moveset. The names of some of the settings, which seem like they were labelled for the ease of developers and forgotten about later, don’t help its case either.

Our complaints with the UI aside, the phone goes about day-to-day tasks with relative fluidity, and we didn’t have trouble getting anything done. The display is not the brightest or sharpest, but does offer some colour-tuning options, and while the fingerprint sensor takes a second to unlock the screen, it was usually accurate.

The daily grind

On the camera side, things get murky again. The dual cameras let the M2 do the depth effect portrait shots that are all the rage these days, but the software can get confused in identifying the subject’s edges.

The image quality in low light is nothing great; however, the M2 does manage to resolve a decent amount of detail in bright outdoor environments. 4K video from the rear camera is also good in the right lighting, and for those who enjoy fiddling with settings, there is a Pro mode included.

In general, the M2 per- forms rather decently, and lasts a long time, thanks to its efficient chipset and screen combination and large battery. The reason we’re being a bit hard on it is its price — which is ₹21,499, and therefore makes it a hard sell. While it has the looks to justify this, the sub-par software experience is what you would expect of a phone in a much lower price bracket.

Interestingly, the M2 Lite model, which sacrifices one rear camera, and downgrades to a 720p screen and a slower processor with a 3,000mAh battery, while retaining similar design and storage options, is priced a full ₹10,000 lower, which makes the UI experience a lot more acceptable.

If you’re looking for a phone in this price range, the Moto Z Play or the slightly more expensive OnePlus 3T (while stocks last) make for far more value for money.

A vacation minus a smartphone

While living without a connection to the digital world can seem daunting at first, there are benefits to leaving technology at home

Two weeks ago, my smartphone shut down because of a low battery as I was about to board a flight to Europe. That seemed odd, given that I had barely used it that day. I plugged it in on the plane, but seven hours later, it still wasn’t functioning. When I arrived at my hotel I tried a different charger, to no avail. The phone was dead – terminally so, it turned out. I hadn’t brought a laptop, so I had no access to the internet or e-mail. I had no camera, no guidebooks, no maps. I took a deep breath and decided to make the best of it. I’m hardly a smartphone addict. I rarely look at social media. I had happily travelled in Europe in the years before cellphones. I decided to emulate the movie star Eddie Redmayne, who last year said he had given up his smartphone in order to live “in the moment.” For the next 10 days, I lived without my phone or any other connection to the digital world. There were indeed many compensations. But it was hard to shake a free-floating anxiety that some disaster loomed. (How would I retrieve my return flight reservations from a non-working cellphone?) Lately, the big internet companies have come under a barrage of criticism for invading privacy, carrying fake news, spreading hate messages (and selling ads against them) and undermining American democracy. What I learned is that, for better or worse, they have so changed the world that life without them is all but impossible outside a monastery. Road maps, a mainstay of my precellphone trips to Europe, were nowhere to be found, nor were the bookstores that used to sell them. The rental-car agency in Milan offered a guide for getting out of the airport, but that was about it. Everyone assumes you have access to Google Maps. Once you’re off the major highways, Italian roads are a spiderweb connected by roundabouts, bristling with signs pointing to the nearest tiny villages but lacking any route numbers. The tried-and-true method of asking for directions prompted some human interaction and gave my travelling companion the opportunity to practise his Italian. But it was a reminder that human beings are often unreliable. The rental-car agent in Milan gave us directions to Siena via Genoa, a route, we later learned, that added about two hours to the trip. Trying to find a house in the Tuscan countryside by asking passersby was futile. No one in rural Italy seems to use street addresses, which, in any event, don’t correspond in any rational way to actual streets. Living in the moment isn’t so great when you’re lost. While I had no phone of my own, others with me had theirs, and I had to rely on them on several occasions, starting with simply finding our house. We had to call the housekeeper for directions (three times). After that, I relied on borrowed phones, and we used Google Maps for navigation. I shared my experience this week with Adam Alter, an associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. “One problem for people who choose to be without phones is, as you found, that people expect you to have one, and infrastructure is designed with the knowledge that almost everyone does,” Alter said. “You’re borderline forced to carry one for basic utility even if you’d prefer not to.” Without access to texts or e-mail, I couldn’t see or respond to any messages, no matter how important. I waited three days before breaking down and (again) borrowing a cellphone to check e-mail. But to gain access to my e-mail from an unfamiliar device required a code sent via text to – where else? – my dead cellphone. Once I gave that up, I was fine, perhaps because I didn’t feel any guilt – it wasn’t my fault the phone failed and I couldn’t check messages. For others, this may be difficult: Alter’s book reports that checking e-mails has become a widespread addiction. At first I missed my phone’s camera feature. I was on holiday in a beautiful country, after all. But after a few days I stopped thinking about documenting the trip and simply enjoyed it. Without internet access, I had no access to travel mainstays such as TripAdvisor or OpenTable. But there were some old guidebooks at the house where we stayed, and major historic sites, tourist attractions and even restaurants don’t change much in a place such as Italy. I found it’s not hard to sniff out a promising restaurant that appeals to your personal taste, as opposed to crowdsourced recommendations. We made some wonderful discoveries. And afterward, there were no e-mails asking me to review the experience (and provide sites such as TripAdvisor with free editorial copy). Alter pointed out that “this sort of serendipity is often the route to novel, exciting, trip-making experiences.” “Phones overschedule and over regiment our lives, which robs us of these opportunities,” he added. I quickly grew accustomed to having no news, stock-market quotes or weather forecasts. I’d never want to live permanently without them, but checking out for 10 days was therapeutic. I read nothing about Donald Trump. Still, I broke down midweek when the housekeeper asked me what I knew about Harvey Weinstein. The accusations of the movie producer’s serial sexual misconduct had broken the day after I left, and was now blanketing Italian media. I knew nothing. So I borrowed a phone and read The New York Times account and then The New Yorker piece that followed. Both were riveting but interfered with what had, until then, been blissfully untroubled sleep. After returning the rental car in Milan, I realized that no phone meant no Uber app. That meant we did a lot of walking in what turns out to be a fascinating city. And my anxieties about my return trip proved unfounded. I skipped the check-in kiosks at the airport, went to the check-in counter and got an old-fashioned paper boarding pass with minimum fuss. I’d never leave home without a working smartphone again. But de- nied access to the internet, I had time to read several books. I focused more on the people with me and the beauty of my surroundings. I was more open to unplanned experiences. I had time for self-reflection. I’d like to think that, on future trips, I’d use the phone only when essential. It turns out there’s an app to help people do that. Called Moment, from the software developer Kevin Holesh, it is designed to curb cellphone dependence and promote “a sustainable work life balance,” as he puts it, by letting users set limits on their phone and internet use. (Put aside, for the moment, the paradox of needing a phone app to break you of your phone addiction.) “Recently, I spent two weeks in a place without cellphone coverage and had a similar experience to you,” Holesh told me. “It was really inconvenient not to have Maps, but refreshing to not constantly be worrying about what’s going on. “It was literally the longest stretch of time I’ve not accessed the internet in 15 years,” he continued. “The first few days were tough, but after that, I got used to the lack of connectivity and loved it.”

Amazon gets 238 proposals

NEW YORK — Amazon said Monday that it received 238 proposals from cities and regions in the U.S., Canada and Mexico hoping to be the home of the company’s second headquarters.

The online retailer kicked off its hunt for a second home base in September, promising to bring 50,000 new jobs and spend more than $5 billion on construction. Proposals were due last week, and Amazon made clear that tax breaks and grants would be a big deciding factor on where it chooses to land.

Amazon.com Inc. did not list which cities or metro areas applied, but said the proposals came from 43 U.S. states, as well as Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, three Mexican states and six Canadian provinces.

Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Halifax and Calgary are some of the Canadian cities that submitted proposals.

Besides looking for financial incentives, Amazon had stipulated that it was seeking to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to more than 740,000 sq. metres in the next decade.

Generous tax breaks and other incentives can erode a city’s tax base. For the winner, it could be worth it, since an Amazon headquarters could draw other tech businesses and their well-educated, highly paid employees.

In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie has endorsed Newark’s bid, saying the state and the city are planning nearly $7 billion in tax breaks. Detroit bid organizers have said its proposal offers Amazon the unique chance to set up shop in both the U.S. and Canada. Missouri officials proposed an innovation corridor between Kansas City and St. Louis rather than a single location.

The seven U.S. states that Amazon said did not apply were: Arkansas, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.

Ahead of the deadline, some cities turned to stunts to try to stand out: Representatives from Tucson, Ariz., sent a 6.4-metre tall cactus to Amazon’s Seattle headquarters; New York lit the Empire State Building orange to match Amazon’s smile logo.

The company plans to remain in its sprawling Seattle headquarters, and the second one will be “a full equal” to it, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said in September. Amazon has said that it will announce a decision sometime next year.

China committed to making world green again

China’s pursuit of modernization is aimed at establishing total harmony between human beings and nature, said General Secretary Xi Jinping in his holistic report at the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Oct 18.

Adding that more efforts are needed to boost green growth, reduce pollution, protect the ecosystem and reform the ecological supervision system, Xi said China’s ecosystem will see fundamental improvements between 2020 and 2035. That goal is in line with the country’s pledge to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent from the 2005 level by 2030. It also honors the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement and manifests China’s inclination to build an ecological civilization.

Over the past five years China has been scrupulously developing an eco-friendly economic growth model, by adapting a green, lowcarbon approach, and its efforts seem to be paying off.

During the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-15), the country reduced its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 20 percent, which is roughly 2.34 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to World Resources Institute.

China’s industrial sector, which accounts for 70 percent of its total carbon emissions, is expected to see major improvements as progress has been made in nourishing the service sector and reducing the industry’s dependence on energy, especially fossil fuels. For example, the service sector accounted for 51.6 percent of China’s GDP in 2016, about 11.8 percentage points higher than the industrial sector.

Consumption of fossil fuels, particularly coal, has shrunk accordingly as the country taps into renewable resources. By 2015, China had an installed non-fossil fuel energy generation capacity of 1,525 gigawatts, almost three times more than in 2005. By the end of last year, it had an installed capacity of 77 gigawatts of photovoltaic power; the figure for 2011 was just 2 gigawatts. And coal accounted for 63.7 percent of total energy consumption in 2015, 8.7 percentage points lower than in 2005.

Since 2011 at least 87 low-carbon pilot cities across the country have been working on green development. Most of them aspire to reach their peak carbon emissions before 2030; cities including Beijing and Guangzhou in South China’s Guangdong province even intend to achieve that goal by 2020.

China also aims to become the world’s largest market for carbon emission permits, which refers to the buying and selling of carbon permits and credits to emit carbon dioxide. The seven pilot cities traded permits for 120 million tons of carbon dioxide worth 3.2 billion yuan ($492 million) by last September, and a nationwide carbon trading market is underway.

The Paris Climate Agreement is aimed at keeping the average global rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and preferably below 1.5 C. That said, global greenhouse gas emission is expected to peak by 2020, and China, one of the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, is likely to make a big difference to it with its emissionreduction endeavors at home and abroad.

The 20 billion yuan SouthSouth Cooperation Fund on Climate Change marks a historic move for Beijing, which has also promised to help developing countries build low carbon demonstration areas, provide personnel training and donate energysaving renewable energy facilities. And the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, which shares the low-carbon ambition, will help the country to keep contributing to global green growth now that the United States has withdrawn from the Paris agreement.

Surely, the vision and approach are a timely update of the three-step strategy of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s for China’s modernization. They are encouraging in that they could positively reshape the world’s power structure.

In fact, one day after Xi delivered the speech, European Union leaders gathered in Brussels for their two-day “autumn summit”. Although the EU leaders meet regularly under the framework of the European Council, which decides the bloc’s political direction, an important outcome of last week’s EU meeting was, to some extent, similar to Xi’s 2050 vision as the EC unequivocally endorsed the “Leaders’ Agenda” drafted by EC President Donald Tusk.

But in essence, the EU still seems obsessed with crisis management, as the aim of this concrete work is to prepare a guide for the bloc to negotiate the Brexit talks, and resolve the migration crisis, strengthen internal security, implement eurozone reforms and improve trade. Tusk’s approach is praiseworthy, not least because he knows what should be high on his political agenda.

Still, Tusk can and should do more, especially as the world is still wondering what the future has in store for the EU and people in the EU have the right to know what the lives of their children and grandchildren be like.

The EU badly needs a blueprint, for example, to close the development gap between Western and Eastern Europe, because one of the most important principles of the bloc is to ensure people within the vast geographical boundary of the EU lead the same quality of life.

Xi has already made it clear in his speech that the Party’s main mission is to resolve the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life to ensure everybody leads a prosperous and beautiful life.

The next China-EU summit will be held in Beijing next year. And EU leaders would do good to study Xi’s speech to understand where the Party gets its longterm vision from and whether it is, even partly, applicable to the EU, for that would give them more material to work for the success of the China-EU summit.

The EU leaders should study Xi’s speech also to explore what opportunities China would offer once it evolves into a great modern socialist country by 2050, which could be a new and important incentive for further improving China-EU relations.