Submitted by Slashgear reports: “Hardware company Samsung today has been revealed to have acquired one of the single most notorious names in Android modification , that being Steve Kondik,aka “Cyanogen” of CyanogenMod 7.” Could Samsung be planning to start working on a highly modified version of Android?
Samsung already does their touchwiz thing. I tried it out on a Droid Charge, and it was pretty horrendous (as most Android vendor bloatware is), so Samsung needs all the help they can get
Edited 2011-08-17 05:56 UTC
now its going to be a hard decicion which device will be my next android phone. i use a SGS with CM7 atm and am pretty happy with it now, however, if google aquires moto i thought it will be a motorola device since u can bet an arm and a leg that there the update policy will be best in android world, but then if steve (cyanogen) does for samsung what he does best, then updates for samsung phones will be at least as fast as motorola. and hardwarewise samsung has always been a winner for me.
It’s definitely a wait and see thing. The carriers are the problem as far as updates are concerned, and so far only the Nexus phones have been able to sidestep that issue. Samsung hiring Cyanogen isn’t going to change that, unless he has some super contacts or great blackmail material.
Maybe Google will fix it for everyone, and it won’t be an issue.
Yeah… US mobile users are screwed either way. Mostly because regulation free nutters, you end up with natural oligopolies pushing their world view onto you without any real alternatives.
That’s something I’m wondering about actually : isn’t selling a CDMA phone only with a phone contract a form of illegal tying ? I mean, exclusivity contracts I can understand, but these are not supposed to last indefinitely…
Half true. Yes, the carriers are a huge part of it if you buy your Android device from them as most do, since they insist on loading their custom firmware down with carrier bloat and usually never apply updates to that. However, if you buy your device directly from the manufacturer (something I always make a point to do to avoid bloatware and lock-in) then neither Samsung nor any other manufacturer can use the carriers as an excuse as far as I’m concerned. The carriers are only to blame if they’re the ones supplying your phone’s os image and, as many problems as they should answer for, they’re not to blame for Android OEMs fscking things up on their end.
How weel has Samsung done at locking down it’s versions of Android. I understand that Motorola has done quite nicely as of late.
What a tongue twister of a name ..CyanogenMod
Wonder if I have the pronunciation right.