You can learn a lot of no code work on a phone. You can also hit walls where a bigger screen saves hours. Knowing which is which helps you plan your time, your data bundle and your trips to a computer, and it helps you give clients honest advice about the devices their staff will use.
What works well on a phone
- Filling in forms and surveys. This is what forms are made for. Field survey apps such as KoboCollect and ODK Collect run on Android phones and keep working without network, then upload later.
- Building simple online forms. Form builders open in a phone browser. A short registration or order form is very doable on a phone.
- Checking and editing spreadsheets. Spreadsheet apps let you read data, fix a cell, sort and filter.
- Using finished apps. Apps built on a spreadsheet are designed to be used on phones.
- Watching automations. You can open an automation tool's run history to see whether today's runs worked.
- Small website edits. Fixing a phone number or adding a short post is possible from a phone.
Where a computer really helps
- Designing large surveys. Survey designs written as XLSForm spreadsheets have many columns, and editing them on a small screen is slow and error prone.