In my case, buy a large SD card to put the apps on, then find out that only the primary storage can hold apps. I think this limitation has been lifted in more recent Android versions, but - of course - I can't upgrade.

Moving all my photos and ebook .pdfs off did alleviate the burden somewhat, but hasn't completely solved it.

My current workaround for very large apps is to uninstall, redownload, install. Apparently, holding both the update and the installed app uses much more space than doing a fresh install.

Alternatively, buy an SD card, then notice that your phone does not have an SD card slot.

Sony has fairly unique system: Install an app, move it to the SD card, the update will install it back to internal memory. You have to move it again, manually. And again, and again, after each update.

Or just leave them all on the internal system, until a system utility wakes up to the fact that there is not enough space, and suggest moving apps to the sdcard. After few rounds of updates, rinse and repeat.

Best i can tell, what Android does is download a delta patch.

Then apply that to a local copy of the previous APK.

If that goes well, it attempts to install the new APK alongside the old install.

And if that works out, the user data is switched over and the old install and APK removed.

So at certain points during the install you need to have enough space for two full installs of the app, and the APKs they came in.

A more accurate analogy would be going to the doctor to get vaccinated, only to discover that it comes with a dental checkup and cleaning. Some people are going to love that. Others are going to wonder why they got something that they did not ask for. A few are going to become paranoid and claim that the doctor also injected a brainwashing drug (even if there is no grounds for their claim).

Microsoft needs to deliver updates in tiers in order to regain trust. Simply dividing it up into mandatory security updates, optional bug fixes, and optional feature upgrades would go a long way to addressing that even if the default is for all three tiers.

> A few are going to become paranoid and claim that the doctor also injected a brainwashing drug (even if there is no grounds for their claim).

Except that there were demonstrated cases of MS inserting the "brainwashing drugs" on the updates. Many people had legitimate copies of Win XP bricked by XPA, MS alti-malware broke install a couple of times in Win7 (and off-line machines were bricked by DRM more than once), and, finally with Win10 we've officially got the spyware and adware coming through updates like people were long expecting.

"dental checkup and cleaning" sounds much more benign than "multi-GB download of an entirely different OS"

And the doctor not nag you every few hours that you haven't had your dental check, while you're working.

And when you do get one, you don't lose sight.

(My favourite complaint is Windows replacing GPU drivers with MS approved broken ones on major updates.)

You're generalising over a whole bunch of devices with different specs. Sure, there was a problem with updates on the 8gb devices. But that was few hardware cycles ago, around 2.3. Now, those devices are around 1% usage, mostly have dead batteries and other components and it's hard to find a new Android device which lacks space for upgrades.

What to do? Upgrade the hardware. It's not supported anyway. Modern Android devices which have updates published do not have this problem anymore.

I have this problem with a 16 GB flagship. Android alone uses 6.50 GB of my storage. I'm on Android 6.0.

Apps take up 6.32 GB of storage on my phone. The remaining space is taken up by the app cache. This isn't useless information like you'd expect, but it turns out it is data that is vital to the operation of my apps. I clear it fairly often, but it fills right back up again within a day.

Luckily I have an SD card slot, so I have space on my phone, but Google does not like expandable storage. Probably because they are a cloud organization or something.

I personally like to stay on a fairly new phone, but I think it is stupid that your phone can become obsolete within a few years. If the radios are still compatible with the cell towers, manufacturers should be obligated to support them. If you can't support your phones, don't churn out so many crappy phones.

I know times are different, but I used a Motorola Razr V3 from 2004 to 2011. It worked just fine for the entire time. Obviously internet sucked, but I was going to school in a place where the internet barely worked anyways.

If you just want a phone for texting, calling, and maybe as a GPS here and there, there is no good reason to buy a new phone other than planned obsolescence.

16 GB is now small by modern smartphone standards, unfortunately. Your hardware is obsolete. It is what it is. The minimum memory size on new non-budget smartphones is now 32 GB, and on the balance of things, the correct trade-off has probably been made to keep making progress rather than maintain perfect compatibility with older hardware. The technology and industry is still evolving so rapidly that your phone does become obsolete in a few years. It's not stupid, it's a logical consequence of the rate of progress. All sorts of technologies on automobiles went obsolete very quickly within the first decade after the invention of cars, too.

I had this problem all the time on a Galaxy S4. I don't remember now whether this was a 16GB or 32GB model; either way, it quickly filled up pretty much entirely by system data and apps. Having an external SD card for everything else didn't help much, and I spent over a hear with phone storage hovering barely above 500MB (if you go below, half of the stuff on the phone refuses to work).

Another interesting tidbit is that as storage fills up, Android slows down.

I suspect this is an artifact of using the Linux kernel. As said kernel puts a focus on IO ops, and the EXT file systems spend a whole lot of time looking for contiguous free space before committing a write.

Thus if your app do a bunch of writing (say syncing local data with the cloud) at start, it will start quite slowly on a near full Android device.

In the past, many Android devices had problems with the quality of the flash - as it aged, it also slowed down. Occasional reset and full trim helped for a while, until it didn't help anymore. The poster children of this problem were Asus Transformer Prime and the original Nexus 7.

I still resent having to upgrade my 8G Moto G over essentially this issue. The lack of visibility into what's using the space is infuriating - the pie chart does not cut it.

The lack of visibility is partially because apps can store files in various locations.

Outside of the app binaries and such you have their core data, stuff that gets generated or downloaded on first run.

Besides that you have a cache directory pr app that is housed outside of the tree location of the binaries and main data.

More recent Android versions have introduced yet more complications on this via the storage access framework, by providing APIs that give apps limited RW access to "external" storage areas without having to request the related permission.

And that's without going into the whole history of just what "external" means when dealing with Android file storage.

What? On 2.3, the average device had 250M internal storage for apps.

A Moto G 2015 has only 8GB storage.

Even mid-range devices sold today only come with 8GB storage, of which 6GB are used by the OS.

What mid-range device only comes with 8 GB? And what price range are you using to define mid-range? Is there even a low-range (lower than 8 GB) if 8 GB seems to be the absolute minimum, since the OS won't even fit on something smaller?

> What mid-range device only comes with 8 GB?

The Moto G 2013/2014/2015

https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-Moto-3rd-Generation-Unlocked...

> And what price range are you using to define mid-range?

$200-$250

> Is there even a low-range (lower than 8 GB) if 8 GB seems to be the absolute minimum, since the OS won't even fit on something smaller?

See above.

The only Moto G model that doesn’t offer 8GB anymore is the 2017 edition.

This is only a problem if your phone is completely full and you refuse to delete anything off it, no? Most of the space on my phone is taken up by photos and videos I've taken off it, and I wipe out the local copies periodically since everything is backed up in Google Photos anyway.