Steve Kondik, the founder of CyanogenMod, he joined Samsung in 2011, and he has announced on Google+ that has now left Samsung after less than 2 years working for the company.

Steve also posted his opinion about the Galaxy S4 on his Google+ account. The overall score is pretty good, but there are some mix feelings about Samsung's TouchWiz interface.

See his post below:

I got to spend some quality time with the S4 (final hardware) before I left Samsung. I'm a huge 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.

TouchWiz has become a bit more consistent with the latest upgrade. There are no more jarring mismatches in different parts of the OS, and it's been lightened up a bit and has a clean "flat" feel. Unfortunately, it feels like it has been sent a few years back in time to the Froyo days. Say goodbye to all of the nice touch-friendly ViewPagers and say hello again to a fully tabbed UI. You'll also enjoy the seemingly endless onslaught of popup windows and modal "Loading..." dialogs. UI performance is average. It's better and worse at the same time, depending on your viewpoint I suppose.

On the features side, it's absolutely loaded with stuff. Some of the new features are very useful like the "hover" preview where you can just point at an email message without touching the screen and it shows a preview of the message. The multi-window feature is present here, and is nice to have around when you need it. The camera app has seen some significant upgrades too, with live previews of the postprocessing effects and a new UI. My least favorite new feature is "Smart Scroll" which is supposed to scroll based on face detection + tilt, but it mostly serves to anger me into disabling it.

The Samsung Hubs are featured front-and-center, and seem to signify independence from the rest of the Android ecosystem. Play is still far more functional, but its a strong effort and I have no doubt that Samsung will keep improving here.

It's a solid device and a clear choice if you are upgrading from the GS2. You'll feel right at home if you have a GS3 currently, but upgrading is probably less urgent (especially if you're on contract).

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 :)

Edit: I'll do a comparison vs. the new HTC One as soon as I get my hands on one, it looks pretty solid too.

Source: Google Plus 

Android's CEO steps down as head for the fastest growing mobile operating system in the planet and gets reassigned to somewhere else in Google world. Larry Page, Google's CEO also announced that Sundar Pichai will now head Android. There is no information yet about why Rubin was moved to a different department but the Google exec commended Pichai for his work with Chrome and his ability to create "easy-to-use" and "excellent" products.

Pichai inherits a robust business, with well over 750 million Android users in the market today, beating Apple for 350 million units! Furthermore, the Android market has sold over 25 billion downloads for various applications. For a company that makes China quite nervous, there is really no doubt that this big move will only mean more good products and services as well as ground-breaking technologies from Pichai. Also, a secret project might be underway for Rubin and the Google team if it was preceded by a big move such as this. Let's just wait and see.

Here's part of Larry Page's announcement, which can be read in full following the source link below.

Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps. Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use-and he loves a big bet. Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security. So while Andy's a really hard act to follow, I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward.

Source: GoogleBlogSpot