Can you run a bitcoin node on android devices?
There's no reason why not in principle, but no-one's ever made a success of doing it (or even tried that I'm aware of).
With the upcoming Bitcoin 0.12, the wallet code recently got enabled to work with "pruned db" 's. That means you only have to verify the 50GB blockchain to initialise the node, once you've done that, you don't have to store that 50GB on the phone (it's 550MB minimum, most modern phones have easily got that much spare). And as most modern phones have faster/accessible WiFi/modem speeds also, running a Bitcoin wallet node in that mode is likely a decent match for the capabiltities of that class of device (but still more expensive on your data plan than the existing Android p2p wallet app).
The Bitcoin 0.12 codebase could be ported to a Bitcoin Core Android wallet app successfully. I'd be really happy to use that.
