I've been experimenting and think I mostly know what Android does.

When you download a new app it comes in a package file and Android
installs from that. It doesn't delete the package, so the total storage
you lose is about double the download size, because you have the
installed app and the package both occupying storage.

If you then update that app, the new package is downloaded and Android
installs from that, overwriting the installed app. The old download
package is deleted at some (unknown) point. so you don't really use up
more storage (except the update is probably a little bigger than the
previous version).

It's a slightly different story for factory-installed apps. There's a
factory package file and the corresponding installed app, but when you
update the app it doesn't delete the factory package file. That means
you now have two package files instead of one. Every update after that
will leave you with the factory package file, the latest update package,
and the installed app.

Bob



On Wed, Dec 16, 2015, at 12:00 PM, Bob Blick wrote:
> It seems that every time I update an app in my phone, my available
> storage drops by the size of the update package. So if I have an app
> that is 16 megs and I've updated it five times, I'm down over 80 megs.
> No big deal by itself, but by rough calculations I'm wasting over a
> gigabyte to all these useless packages, leaving less room for important
> cat videos.
>=20
> Unfortunately the folder that houses all the install packages is
> invisible and unavailable.
>=20
> Is there an app that lets you zotz these files, or do I need to root my
> phone first?
>=20
> Thanks for any insight.
>=20
> Bob

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