$500k is almost the entire budget of the FreeBSD Foundation. I don't know what the Linux Foundation spends money on, but the FreeBSD Foundation does great stuff with its money.
And if you happen to have a "paltry" $500k sitting around, feel free to send it in FreeBSD's direction. :-)
The kernel is just a small part of the software on a phone, of corse, and likely not the crucial differentiator either. Don't forget that Samsung probably uses Linux in a lot of other products too, e.g. TVs.
And if you happen to have a "paltry" $500k sitting around, feel free to send it in FreeBSD's direction. :-)