If you’ve had any experience playing around with custom Android ROMs, then it’s likely you’ve heard of CyanogenMod and its founder, Steve Kondik. As you may also know, Steve went to work at Samsung in August 2011. As announced on his Google+, Steve has left Samsung and appears to be headed to greener pastures in the coming months. There’s no word on what/where that may be, but a job at Google would be nice now, wouldn’t it.
In his post on Google+ he noted that the Samsung Galaxy S 4 hardware is very impressive, even if the design is still largely the same as the Galaxy S III before it. Where his comments were most interesting was when he referred to TouchWiz:
TouchWiz has become a bit more consistent with the latest upgrade. There are no more jarring mismatches in different parts of the OS, and it’s been lightened up a bit and has a clean “flat” feel. Unfortunately, it feels like it has been sent a few years back in time to the Froyo days. Say goodbye to all of the nice touch-friendly ViewPagers and say hello again to a fully tabbed UI. […] It’s better and worse at the same time, depending on your viewpoint I suppose.
Good news in parts, bad news in others. Here’s hoping the UI won’t impact too much on battery life, overall performance, and most importantly, future updates to the device.
Completely agree with him about Touchwiz stuck in the Froyo days. It certainly doesn’t look like an Android 4.0+ OS.
Not so impressed with the S4. Just looks like an S3-S. Just packed with software gimmicks.
From the reviews so far wiz makes the s4’s octocore CPU work really hard…
Interesting news, I mustn’t have been as heavily into Android back then as I didn’t even know the cyanogenmod founder worked with Samsung.
I hope he does some inventive things in Key Lime Pie. 🙂
I really hope he scores a job at Google.
Imagine how lightweight and fast Android could become if they only hired a few really good devs, like chainfire!
Actually, companies like Google & Microsoft have very talented (but relatively unknown) developers working for them…
Such a shame we don’t hear more about them.
I hope so too. I always wondered what he thought about working at Samsung despite being the founder of Cyanogenmod, especially considering the recent bad reputation of samsung in the dev scene…
It’s a shame he declined to do an interview @ androidpolice.
The tabs in the settings is horrific design.
It may be horrific design, but remember, chicks love the ‘Wiz.
Android wouldn’t be the same if Steve Kondik had not been around in the early days, and that’s a fact.
Cyanogen and Haykuro shaped the early days of Android modding for me. They had a massive impact on the entire community.
Agree one thousand times! Steve Kondik is a God!