I really started noticing this since starting to use F-Droid, for a lot of simple apps in the Google Play Store, you can get the same functionality, with zero ads and a much smaller bundle size in F-Droid.
For example this app from F-Droid, which shows your GPS location & coordinates, weighs in at _48KiB_! https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.borneq.heregpslocation/ (disclaimer: I have not tried the app, it was just the first result that came up from a search).
It's pretty cool to see that yes, it's perfectly possible to build lightweight Android apps; and it's really a question of what you put in the bundle.
(I've always thought the terminology was a little confusing/imprecise, since I wouldn't consider these apps to be "tests", but rather simply the UI of a GPS receiver. Then again, when I hear "GPS" I think of a receiver-only, i.e. a device that just tells you your current lat/lon/etc. position, whereas I guess what most people consider a "GPS app" would more precisely be termed a "GPS navigation/map".)
Personally I would do it with Termux and Python, but non-coders would have trouble using that.
Hell on the latest version of Android I can't even read my battery percentage without typing in some code (the latest update removed the battery % from the status bar). Everything has gone downhill.