What in case a family of 6 wants to share the device? It is very difficult to share pins or patterns with everyone. Easiest would be atleast provide 5-6 fingerprints possible so tat the device can be shared seemlessly....
feature not provided by WhatsApp developers or any other application developer groups...it all depends how each individual developer groups wants to control the phone memory usage...android developers can make changes to the OS installed on phones ho...