Android facts you probably did not know

• It wasn't Google's idea: Android was the brainchild of Andy Rubin, who founded Android Inc. in October 2003 with the aim of creating a new mobile platform. Google later bought Android Inc. and hired Rubin and others in August 2005.
• It almost didn't work out: Android almost immediately ran out of cash after its founding, only to be saved, according to the Businessweek, by Steve Perlman.

• The Nexus line was a hot rumour years before the Nexus One: People started predicting about the "gPhone" as early as 2007 though Nexus came out in 2010.

• Microsoft thought it would be a non-event: Microsoft's Scott Horn, then head of the Windows Mobile marketing team, had told Engadget after Android's release, "I don't understand the impact they are going to have."

• Resolution scaling was introduced in Version 1.6: The ability to automatically scale images based on display size appeared in Donut, or Android 1.6, paving the way for the huge range of device form factors on the Android market today.

• There's an Android phone in space: A British firm launched a Nexus phone on Space, to control a satellite as part of an experiment and see how well consumer-grade electronics stand up to the rigors of space.

• Every app you run on your Android phone gets its own virtual machine: Each active app on an Android device runs in its own Dalvik VM, which keeps it safe and separate from core functions. This improves battery life and boosts performance of the phone.

• The first official version code name was NOT a dessert: Google's Dan Morrill confirmed in January that the very first alpha version of Android released to internal developers was R2-D2.