When I started writing mobile apps, I figured, how hard can it be? Apps look dinky on the small screen, so it must be easy to create them.
But holy shit is it hard.
It's hard on Android, on iOS, on WP7. And from what I hear, it's even harder on Blackberry.
It's almost like the MS-DOS days when you had to figure out how to squeeze every last ounce out of the machine to get your stuff to work. Except now you also have to make your app look good.
But you know what? I'm loving the challenge. I've been developing desktop apps for so long that I just assumed I could keep adding feature after feature and option after option without worrying that I'd tax the system.
Now that I'm a mobile developer, I'm finding it strangely wonderful to have to consider things like battery life, reduced screen real estate and limited storage space. I'm forced to make sure that anything I add to my app is important, because if it's not important then it's not worth the trade-offs.
Regardless of whether I stick with mobile development, the lessons I've learned from it are ones I'll apply to everything I create in the future. Keep it simple, keep it uncluttered, and keep it focused. That's how you create great apps for any platform.