Did you know Samsung could buy Android first, but laughed it out of court?

The year is 2005. There are no smartphones, at least not by today’s standards. Carriers control not just what apps run on your phone - they try to curate search results on phones, pushing ringtones first and relevant results last.

At the same time, countless phones run various software versions, and what apps work on a Nokia phone often won’t work on Motorolas or Samsungs. Developers stay away from phones as if they were the devil. The few that feel obliged to write software for mobile are doing so on a per phone basis, literally writing separate code for dozens of phones, often for over 100.

The scent of change, however, is in the air. Engineer Andy Rubin had already started working on an operating system first designed for digital cameras, but changed his mind and evolved the project to fit phones. His career had started as a robotics engineer in Carl Zeiss, but later on he worked on an operating system for handhelds, and later on became well known for his Danger startup and the iconic T-Mobile Sidekick phone (remember that clicky slide-out keyboard?). He’s got the experience, and he’s got the support of a few more engineers. That’s why in October of 2003, he kicks off the Android project, but in just around a year, the start-up is starting to run out of money and out of people to lend from. There is no big company behind it, no owner to save it.

With a year worth of developed software, Rubin has to pitch the newly born Android to someone to get the money. What you might not have known, though, is that that first someone is not Google, the current owner of Android - it’s Samsung. The Android team, consisting of eight people back then, having flown out all the way to Seoul, Korea, has gotten a first meeting with one of the largest phone makers of the time, Samsung.