Cyanogen leaves Samsung

[Mopetar]

According to the The Verge, Cyanogen is no longer working with Samsung. Android Police also have some good coverage.

Apparently he left because he wanted to do "something new" which sounds interesting.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I guess that means the Exynos SGS4 is going to have crap CM support. He was the only one willing to mess with it.

 

[jacktesterson]

Is the OP title misleading?

Kondik is leaving Samsung.

Doesn't say anything about the S4 losing CM support.

 

[pm]

Is the OP title misleading?

Kondik is leaving Samsung.

Doesn't say anything about the S4 losing CM support.

No, it's not really misleading, although I was confused too briefly. Steve Kondik goes by the nickname Cyanogen and his modified firmware is called CyanogenMod after him. So it's correct. Cyanogen is leaving Samsung... which doesn't imply much about Samsung's support for CM... except that it's possible for the support to get worse now that he's not there any more.

 

[poofyhairguy]

No, it's not really misleading, although I was confused too briefly. Steve Kondik goes by the nickname Cyanogen and his modified firmware is called CyanogenMod after him. So it's correct. Cyanogen is leaving Samsung... which doesn't imply much about Samsung's support for CM... except that it's possible for the support to get worse now that he's not there any more.

The support worsening is almost a guarantee. When the rest of the CM community decided to not support the Exynos SGS4, Steve volunteered to do the job. Now I wonder if he will actually do that, or if he does if he will have his heart in it.

I wouldn't touch the Exynos SGS4 with a ten foot pole.

 

[s44]

The support worsening is almost a guarantee. When the rest of the CM community decided to not support the Exynos SGS4, Steve volunteered to do the job.

He did?

I thought he was just going to do the Qualcomm version, like he did for the last generation.

Personally I'm fine with the TW framework and need a better headphone setup, so I'm hoping for some Exynos variant I can use here... but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[lothar]

I guess that means the Exynos SGS4 is going to have crap CM support. He was the only one willing to mess with it.

Pretty much.

 

[Mopetar]

I wouldn't touch the Exynos SGS4 with a ten foot pole.

Is it even an issue if you're in the U.S.? I know that not everyone on these forums lives there, but I think a majority do and Samsung uses Qualcomm SoCs for the Galaxy series in the U.S.

 

[lothar]

Is it even an issue if you're in the U.S.? I know that not everyone on these forums lives there, but I think a majority do and Samsung uses Qualcomm SoCs for the Galaxy series in the U.S.

There are people that import phones...If I was confident that the Exynos version would have excellent 3rd party support, I'd import it over getting the US version if I have to.
I imported the Exynos Galaxy S II instead of getting the crappy Qualcomm SkyRocket HD crap, and I'm happy that I did.
I'm probably skipping this round though.

Nexus 5, Motorola's X-Phone, and "maybe" the Qualcomm Galaxy S IV are all on my short list...Yes, in that order.
All others announced so far are irrelevant.

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Meh. If Samsung keep going the way they are going right now, the S3 may be the last Samsung phone I buy.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

I'm switching over to an iPhone for my next phone personally, since the battery life is so great. Unless, they can get a phone that is high powered and has a large battery or is more efficient with the battery.

 

[gorcorps]

The support worsening is almost a guarantee. When the rest of the CM community decided to not support the Exynos SGS4, Steve volunteered to do the job. Now I wonder if he will actually do that, or if he does if he will have his heart in it.

I wouldn't touch the Exynos SGS4 with a ten foot pole.

*shrugs* CM is a very good rom on most devices but I don't have the undying love for it that some do. Personally I ditched the AOSP based roms in favor of modified TW roms a while ago on my GS3. I wanted to have more of the features that Samsung brought to the table that makes their devices a little unique, and CM could never do this. A lot of the samsung features are stupid or don't work well, but a couple of them were useful and I wanted them back. If there's stuff you know you don't want in the TW rom there are roms that let you pick and choose how "bloated" your firmware ends up being when you flash it. You only will install the stuff you wanted.

 

[KB]

Why would CM support get worse? He says:

"I'll probably be picking up the T-Mobile variant when they hit the shelves, assuming they don't lock the bootloaders or something silly and self-defeating like that. Since it's powered by Snapdragon, CM should work wonderfully on it "


If he is going to get one, wouldn't he work to make sure CM works on it?

 

[Eug]

Wow, his stint at Samsung sure didn't last long.

Plus, he says TouchWiz sucks now.

 

[bearxor]

I'm switching over to an iPhone for my next phone personally, since the battery life is so great. Unless, they can get a phone that is high powered and has a large battery or is more efficient with the battery.

The going thing now is to just overkill it with a large battery. The HTC One comes really close to iPhone 5 battery life so the SGS4 should match or exceed it since the battery is a little bit larger than the One.

I think Apple would kill if they made an iPhone 5 with double the battery. It would still be a pretty thin phone and you'd be catering to all of those business people out there that want extra battery in the smallest form factor possible. I imagine it would still be thinner than an iPhone 4/4S.

 

[Red Storm]

The going thing now is to just overkill it with a large battery. The HTC One comes really close to iPhone 5 battery life so the SGS4 should match or exceed it since the battery is a little bit larger than the One.

I think Apple would kill if they made an iPhone 5 with double the battery. It would still be a pretty thin phone and you'd be catering to all of those business people out there that want extra battery in the smallest form factor possible. I imagine it would still be thinner than an iPhone 4/4S.

They really should have kept the same thickness and just gone with a bigger battery. It's not as if the 4S was a thick phone. Especially with the billions they have in the bank, it wouldn't be a risky move either compared to a company that's low on cash and needs to cut corners.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Yeah, it's not like it requires much thickness. The Razr Maxx has a crazy large battery but is still 9mm thick, thinner than the 4S.

I don't think anyone holds the iPhone 5 and thinks "wow, this extra 1.4mm they shaved off really makes the difference".

 

[poofyhairguy]

Why would CM support get worse? He says:

"I'll probably be picking up the T-Mobile variant when they hit the shelves, assuming they don't lock the bootloaders or something silly and self-defeating like that. Since it's powered by Snapdragon, CM should work wonderfully on it "


If he is going to get one, wouldn't he work to make sure CM works on it?

The CM support will be fine for the US versions of the phone with Snapdragons inside. This news doesn't really change that.

What I was saying we can expect is for the International Exynos version of the phone to have crappy CM support.

Which isn't really a surprise- every Exynos device other than the SGS1 has had crappy CM support.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Personally I ditched the AOSP based roms in favor of modified TW roms a while ago on my GS3.

Me too, I am running a TW ROM on my SGS2. There are some things that TW still does better than stock Android certainly, but nothing I can't live without.

The problem with TW ROMs is that leaves you completely dependent on Samsung to release updates. Currently my SGS2 is on 4.1, and if I get the 4.2 update it will probably be the last one. Every CM version for the device has needed Samsung to release the kernel source code to work properly, so when Samsung decides the device no longer get updates it no longer gets updates.

For my SGS2 this dead-end isn't a big deal because I want a new phone anyway with a better screen and faster SoC. That sort of dead end will matter much more with a SGS4, where its screen and SoC are powerful enough that I should be able to get three years out of the device instead of 18 months. Without CM I might get stuck on older TW ROMs at the two year mark which will make the phone less useful to me.

As it is I prefer TW ROMs, but I would take a mostly working CM ROM of the newest version of Android any day over a TW ROM of an Android two releases ago.

Basically I want a Nexus without the crappy hardware. I think the US SGS4 should give me that.

 

[benzylic]

*shrugs* CM is a very good rom on most devices but I don't have the undying love for it that some do. Personally I ditched the AOSP based roms in favor of modified TW roms a while ago on my GS3. I wanted to have more of the features that Samsung brought to the table that makes their devices a little unique, and CM could never do this. A lot of the samsung features are stupid or don't work well, but a couple of them were useful and I wanted them back. If there's stuff you know you don't want in the TW rom there are roms that let you pick and choose how "bloated" your firmware ends up being when you flash it. You only will install the stuff you wanted.

Curious, what rom are you using

 

[lothar]

I'm switching over to an iPhone for my next phone personally, since the battery life is so great. Unless, they can get a phone that is high powered and has a large battery or is more efficient with the battery.

The Droid RAZR MAXX beats the crap out of the iPhone in battery life.
If "battery life" is your main concern, why would you get an iPhone?

 

[jacktesterson]

The Droid RAZR MAXX beats the crap out of the iPhone in battery life.
If "battery life" is your main concern, why would you get an iPhone?

My Note II gets crazy battery life. Best battery life I've ever had on the biggest most powerful phone I've owned. Easily get 2 days off one charge with my weekday usage.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

The Droid RAZR MAXX beats the crap out of the iPhone in battery life.
If "battery life" is your main concern, why would you get an iPhone?

Well the iPhone beats out my gnex

My Note II gets crazy battery life. Best battery life I've ever had on the biggest most powerful phone I've owned. Easily get 2 days off one charge with my weekday usage.

That's just too big.

I also don't game anymore on my phone since I got a n7. So I don't feel the need for an android phone.

And I just want to try an iPhone, my mom has the 5 and I like it a lot better than my gnex.

 

[Geekbabe]

My Note II gets crazy battery life. Best battery life I've ever had on the biggest most powerful phone I've owned. Easily get 2 days off one charge with my weekday usage.

I agree! Battery life on this thing is good enough to make angels weep for joy.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

I guess that means the Exynos SGS4 is going to have crap CM support. He was the only one willing to mess with it.

Team Hacksung will take it. I know they say the same thing everytime like we're totally done, but look at the SGS2. I thought they were stopping after CM10? While they do speak the truth about Samsung being terrible for development, they're whining and threatening to drop Samsung forever now, and yet they're still working hard at it.

Honestly, with Cyanogen leaving Samsung, I wouldn't be worried. It was really up to the international developers to work on the Exynos S4 anyway.