This was also a huge problem for Android. At some point Android started using MTP instead of appearing as a mass storage device, which made for several technica

This was also a huge problem for Android. At some point Android started using MTP instead of appearing as a mass storage device, which made for several technical wins. Most importantly, internal memory could be one contiguous block formatted as ext3. But this happened well before MTP was properly supported in Windows, which predictably made things difficult for a lot of users. (This was back when Android had competition, so that was important). If I was a betting type, I'd wager that Microsoft's FAT patents (and various legal settlements where they got to say "Linux infringes on hundreds of patents" without ever needing to specify the patents) had a lot to do with that change, since, with the exception of a few manufacturers who continued to ship devices with external SD slots, and USB-OTG which is kind of a bonus feature, Android finally didn't need FAT for interoperability.