For more details, head to OPPO Malaysia's website.

*This article is written with information provided by SanDisk*

     For the past few years, I have used a bunch of different USB 3.0 devices which includes flash drives, external hard drives, drive enclosures etc. From what I understood in the past, USB 3.0 is a standard for faster USB devices and most of the time, the corresponding ports are coloured blue as far as I'm concerned. That was, until the good people over at SanDisk sent me a pretty cool infographic which led me to do some research on my own as well.

     Looking at the infographic above, everything is put in an easy to understand manner. The first part basically tells you the difference between USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. According to USB standards, USB 2.0 has a throughput of about 50MBytes/s while USB 3.0 has a throughput of about 500MBytes/s. In real life applications though, USB 2.0 devices will register up to 35-40MBytes using top-of-the-line products while USB 3.0 speeds may go upwards to 250MBytes/s depending on the quality of the product. With all that said, users will notice substantial differences when upgrading from a USB 2.0 device to a USB 3.0 device.

     The second part of the graphic tells you that not all USB 3.0 devices are created the same, hence the price disparity. If you didn't what I meant in the last sentence, SanDisk gave a simple analogy: imagine that you are shopping for a sports car, and your decision came down between 2 cars. While both cars are defined as sports cars, one could hit 240km/h while the other could hit 300km/h, without considering other circumstances, you would absolutely choose the one that could do 300km/h. Same goes for a USB 3.0 device; to be classified as one, a device only needs to sport the USB 3.0 mechanical interface and they are set. In short, not all USB 3.0 devices perform the same and some may have perform miles above compared to others.

     After learning that, I did some digging around and lo and behold, I found the perfect example to demonstrate the fact that not all USB 3.0 devices are the same. If you are in touch with technology, you would know the brand, Pendrive, which started all the rave for USB flash drives. However, it seems that it has fade away from its glory days. Looking at its Sliq 3.0, while being relatively affordable, is quite deceptive, while being USB 3.0 compliant, its throughput read speed is only 35MByte/s, which might as well make it a USB 2.0 device instead.

     Of course, there are also USB 3.0 compliant flash drives which utilize the added throughput rate. Let's look at the SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 Flash Drive. With read speeds of up to 245MBytes/s and write speeds of up to 190MBytes/s, it is pretty much the bee's knees for fast USB 3.0 flash drives. While it does come at almost 3X the price of the aforementioned Pendrive, the increased performance will make one unable to look at USB devices the same way again.

     This is the what I have learnt from SanDisk as well as my own research. I think after reading this, you are pretty well informed to decide your choice of USB 3.0 flash drives. Pro tip: always read up on the specifications of USB drives before making a purchase and look for the read/write speeds section. If the speed is well below the standard, you know what to do.

     First day of November (GMT+8), Evolve opened it flood gates and launched their Big Alpha test. While gamers still need a key to get into the alpha, it seems that a lot of online personalities/publications are giving upwards of 20,000 keys to those who are interested. I, too, got my hands on a key and have been playing the game for a few hours now, and here I am to share my opinion about the game with you guys.

     Unlike almost any multiplayer online alpha/beta test, Evolve's servers are apparently up to snuff to the point where after the alpha launched they were still giving out alpha keys like it was nothing. I really like how confident they are with their servers, probably a good sign of confidence for those who are looking to buy the game on February 10.

     Performance wise, Evolve is quite the taxing game. My GTX660M could barely run it on 1080p Low. It would probably be fine on lower resolutions but yeah, I would recommend a desktop GPU, probably GTX560 and above if you are wanting to play the game in its full glory.

      Gameplay wise, matchmaking is made very easy. Arrange your preferred role in numerical order and the game will try to match you into a game where you can play your preferred role. One thing I would like to note though, is that players won't know what role they are taking before going through 2 loadscreens, so it's almost like going into the game blind. The game will also sometimes drop you into ongoing games, which is not a big problem for hunters, but for monsters, I would think that is a major disadvantage. All these issues will probably be addressed in the full release, but for now it is pretty annoying. The alpha also has a system to deter leavers, where they impose a matchmaking pause for leavers.

     In the game, you either play as one of the hunters, or the monster. For the most part, I took the role of assault, where my responsibility is just to tank as much damage as possible with my shield and shoot lightning! The support has a mini-gun and is able to cloak the entire team, the medic has a sniper rifle and is able to heal (duh), and the trapper can shoot harpoons to slow down the monster and deploy mobile arenas to restrict monster movement. Teamwork is pretty much essential in this game. For those who have played Left 4 Dead before, just think of it as facing a very buffed up Tank, but this time, you have technology on your side.

     Overall, I have to say, the game is pretty much mindless fun. Of course, players can also look into deeper strategies like where to place mines, or how to throw hunters off your trail et cetera. Will I buy this game though? I probably would but first of course I would need to build a rig (coming soon) to get the full experience and of course I would like to see how polished the end product is before I make a decision. Oh well, let's not frustrate ourselves with that and end this post with a alpha key giveaway! Key in one of these keys into where you would normally activate a Steam key and you are set! Happy hunting!

     Of course, being the ever so sceptical me, I went "Cool, now what are you not telling me? ". Since it was not the full specifications nor had the design of the phone surfaced, I naturally made the assumption that there were gimmicks used in order to reach this price point. Fortunately, over the past month, I was proven wrong.

     Yesterday, press renders came out and showed the world what the One allegedly looked like. If the leak is true, the One will easily be one of the first phones that comply to most of the wishes of the Android community, or well at least the Android community on Reddit. Beautifully designed phone (dat interchangeable back) , with specifications to walk the talk.

a photo taken by the phone

     So you might be saying, "Cool phone. So what?" Perhaps this will be a take-off point, for Android phones. Nevertheless, the OnePlus One will be officially released on April 23rd. In three more days, we will know if this is the One to rule them all.