CyanogenMod’s Steve Kondik leaves software engineer post at Samsung Mobile

CyanogenMod’s founder Steve Kondik announced on Monday that he is leaving Samsung.

Kondik launched CyanogenMod, a developer community and open source replacement firmware, and released CyanogenMod 6, based on Android 2.2 codenamed Froyo, in 2010. Kondik wrote the custom portions of CyanogenMod, although it also included contributions from the xda-developers community, but he notably revealed on his Facebook page in August 2011 that he would continue his work on Android-related goodies at Samsung Mobile as a software engineer.

Now, nearly 2 years later, Kondik has taken to Google+ to talk about the Galaxy S4 and briefly mention his sudden departure from Samsung:

I got to spend some quality time with the S4 (final hardware) before I left Samsung. I’m a huge a fan of the S3 and use one everyday, so I was quite pleased with the S4. Yeah, there is no refresh of the industrial design other than a few minor things such as the edging, but the device actually feels quite a bit more solid than the S3. Specwise, this device blows the competition out of the water. There are a number of unique features that have a lot of potential (assuming Samsung is opening up an API for them) such as the touchscreen which can register “hover” events, and an IR blaster. Benchmarks put this device FAR above the competition (40K on Quadrant CPU) and there should be no reason why it won’t run your favorite apps flawlessly. GPS seems to work better than any other Samsung device, with a lock being acquired instantly in almost any condition. The camera is excellent as well, both front and back.

Kondik’s post goes into more detail about Samsung’s latest device, but the only light shed about why he left Samsung is available in the comments. As seen in the screenshot below, Kondik said there was no reason in particular for his departure and claimed Samsung was great.

The software engineer apparently decided to “do something new,” but he notably commented to Android Police’s Artem Russakovskii, who questioned where he was going, to ask again in a couple of months.

(via Android Police)