Cyanogen founder Steve Kondik working on Oculus Go at Facebook

At Oculus Connect in San Jose, California, Facebook's VR team made a number of big announcements that included a permanent price drop for the Oculus Rift to $399, and new features for the burgeoning Oculus platform.

One of the more interesting hardware announcements was the Oculus Go, a standalone $199 headset that sits in between the Oculus-powered Samsung Gear VR and the requires-tethering Rift. Expected to launch sometime in 2018, here's what we know about it so far. From VRHeads:

This headset requires no phone and no cables running to the PC. It will be able to play movies, run games, and help you meet up with friends in VR. It is built to be lightweight, is has a new mesh foam interface, and it supposedly has the best visual clarity so far seen in VR, thanks to new lenses and a WQHD LCD fast-switch display with a higher fill-factor than OLED.

Also interesting is that Cyanogen founder, Steve Kondik, revealed on his Facebook page that he's been working on bringing the Oculus Go to market. After Cyanogen Inc., the company he ran with controversial CEO Kirt McMaster, shut down in late 2016, Kondik took some time off before beginning work at Oculus in March 2017. He briefly had a stint at Samsung between 2011 and 2013 before returning to Cyanogen.

Cyanogen has since transitioned to Lineage, which releases custom ROMs for many popular Android devices, including those that have been left behind by their manufacturers.

Everything you need to know about the Oculus Go from Oculus Connect 2017!

Daniel Bader

Daniel Bader was a former Android Central Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor for iMore and Windows Central.