> The REAL problem SQL wrappers need to solve is that most languages don't have a good interface with SQL. So most often SQL is handled in strings and manipulated with string manipulation and there is no type safe way transitioning data from the DB to a general purpose language.

For me this is (was) the main problem. When building Android apps and there was need to store some data locally, I always used Realm (https://realm.io/blog/realm-for-android/) because their API was way easier to use, other than the default SQLite database. Of course this made the apk significantly big, but at least i knew how to manage the data. SQLite on the other hand, wasn't easy to work with, and worse when it came to versioning / updating the local database schema / definition without messing things.

I say (was) because late last year, I started using Room (https://developer.android.com/topic/libraries/architecture/r...), and working with SQLite on Android has never been way easier. So yes, this has been a problem, but the solutions if built well, are great.