> Nearly half of android users at any point in time have run out of space and can't install updates anyway.
Do you have a source for this? Not saying that you're wrong but I'd be very surprised if this was the case. In my experience Android is so laggy as to be completely unusable at anything above about 85% storage utilization. In fact it's the first thing I check when friends / family members complain about their phone being "slow".
Android becomes laggy when nearly full because it starts to delete cached jit compiled data. That means every app startup gets super slow as the compiler runs. The compiler also uses a bunch of ram, causing background apps (like the launcher) to get unloaded.
I have a Nook tablet with 8Gb internal storage and a 32 Gb MicroSD card installed. Almost all of the Google and Nook apps cannot be moved to the MicroSD card space. Android takes up almost half of the 8Gb internal storage and the unmovable apps take up almost half of the rest, leaving very little space to work with. I've had lots of occasions where the system has told me it needs more space to do an update, and I would have to delete some of my apps to get that update.
I really like my Nook, but having Android and Google apps locking up so much of the internal space seriously impacts its usability.
Any app developer can see free storage space. These are numbers from my app, which might not be truly representative, but is probably pretty close. Just add storage space logging to your app. Anything under 5 percent free and the play store refuses to do updates.
Do you have a source for this? Not saying that you're wrong but I'd be very surprised if this was the case. In my experience Android is so laggy as to be completely unusable at anything above about 85% storage utilization. In fact it's the first thing I check when friends / family members complain about their phone being "slow".