Oculus partners with Xiaomi to release standalone VR headset
While it seems most of CES 2018 has been dominated by new smart home products powered by Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, another category of products is expected to be at the forefront – Virtual Reality. Oculus and Xiaomi have announced a partnership with Qualcomm to bring VR to the Chinese market with the Xiaomi Mi VR headset.
This VR headset looks extremely similar to the Oculus Go which was announced back in October of last year. This comes as no surprise considering the partnership and how far Oculus already has come in the virtual reality market.
The new Mi VR is powered by the same Snapdragon 821 chipset which the Oculus Go was powered on, and shares “the same core hardware features and design” while also supporting the Oculus Mobile SDK. This will allow developers in China to get onboard with VR and develop apps and services designed specifically for the new Mi VR.
On top of being powered by the same specs, the Mi VR headset will also include a motion controller and will feature a 3.5mm headphone jack. However, pricing for this new headset has not been shared as of yet, and we don’t know when the Mi VR will officially launch.
Nonetheless, it’s awesome to see more standalone VR headsets become available, as you won’t need to worry about burning up the battery in your smartphones. Let us know what you think about this partnership and if you are excited to see more standalone VR headsets launched in 2018.