Cyanogen gets hired by Samsung, will keep making ROM mods on the side

Steve Kondik, the guy behind the famous CyanogenMod Android ROMs, has become a Samsung Mobile Software Engineer, but he said that he plans to keep his hobby, and review coding for future iterations of the immensely popular CyanogenMod 7.

Samsung was the first to break the manufacturer/carrier mould by sending the CyanogenMod crew brand new spanking Galaxy S II handsets, encouraging them to show what they are capable of doing by creating custom ROMs for the handset. Now obviously it decided to straight out drink from the source, and hired Steve Kondik.

The software engineer has a proven track record of making awesome modifications to stock handsets, which iron out bugs, speed up performance, and add missing functionalities, so him joining the Samsung Android team could only mean the homebrew TouchWiz UI should be getting more love from customers. Moreover, Samsung will need something to further differentiate itself other than awesome hardware, now that Google acquired Motorola as its Android manufacturing playground.

via SlashGear