Mobile/Spec checklist

When reviewing a spec from a mobile angle, the following aspects are worth considering.

status: un-reviewed jotted down ideas

Use cases

Review the use cases on which the spec was built, to assess whether they have a mobile specific aspect

Networking

• mobile devices operate often in harsher networking conditions: higher latency, intermittent connectivity, limited bandwith; specs that rely on networking or offer new forms of connectivity should be reviewed under these constraints

Indicator

• access to sensitive data and services (e.g. hardware API) often come with chrome indicators that this access is ongoing; but the limited screen space available to mobile devices makes the proliferation of indicators less effective; specs that assume security or privacy is enforced through these indicators should be reviewed under that light

CPU usage

• intensive or frequent CPU usage affect negatively the battery life of mobile devices; specs should be reviewed with paying attention to polling-based mechanism, to high frequency events, and to operations that might require a lot of computation