Awais Imran on August 16, 2011, 7:35 pm

CyanogenMod Founder Steve Kondik Now Working At Samsung Mobile

The string of good news for Android continues today as popular custom firmware founder Steve “Cyanogen” Kondik has announced that he has been hired by Samsung Mobile.

Cyanogen

The news comes from Steve Kondik himself who updated his work information on his Facebook profile a few hours ago. Samsung Mobile has hired him as a Software Engineer; his role at the company is unclear at the moment but Kondik has stated that his work will make Android “more awesome”.

Being hired by Samsung Mobile creates quite a few questions for Kondik’s fans, with the most important one relating to the potential consequences on CyanogenMod. Kondik has clearly stated on his Facebook profile, “Side project (CM) is not affiliated in any way with my employer :)” which debunks any rumors about Samsung replacing TouchWiz UI with CyanogenMod or them producing a smartphone based on CyanogenMod. He has also mentioned that he will maintain lead role at CyanogenMod while working at Samsung.

In response to AndroidGuys, here’s what Kondik had to say:

…it’s a job and I’m glad that I can use what I learned from all this to do something cool in the real world 🙂 I’ll still be doing code review and some leadership for CM, but I’ll be keeping it legit like always…I think we really broke away from the modding community. Most of us are professional engineers or in the field some way or another.

For the uninitiated, Steve Kondik is the founder of the CyanogenMod, an aftermarket custom firmware for Android. Currently at version 7.1, the customized version of the stock firmware was first released on the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1 – the first Android smartphone – after it was discovered that the phone could be rooted to gain administrator access. It is the most popular custom ROM for Android with downloads exceeding 500,000.

It’s been a big day for Android, what with Google acquiring Motorola Mobility, HTC’s bootloader-unlock process going live for their Sensation smartphone and Chinese company Xiaomi announcing the first ever Android superphone based on the MIUI custom ROM.