Mobile App Architecture
Layering, navigation, background execution, and the platform rules you do not set.
5 to work through
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beginner Multiple choice
A delivery app marks a parcel delivered. The phone is on a weak connection: the request reaches the server, the response is lost, and the app retries. The customer is charged twice and the parcel is marked delivered twice. Which change fixes this properly?
2 min answer -
beginner
A mobile client stamps each event with its own clock and the server stores that timestamp. Why does this break reporting and de-duplication, and what should the server record instead?
2 min answer -
advanced
Alibaba reported a peak of 583,000 order-creation requests per second during the 2020 Singles' Day festival on 11 November. Demand of that shape is produced by a countdown every client sees at the same instant. What does scheduled demand change about the mobile client's responsibilities, and where would copying the approach be a mistake?
3 min answer -
advanced
Design the mobile architecture for a ride-hailing app used on poor networks, in the background, with continuous location updates.
2 min answer -
advanced
What changes about API design when your clients cannot be upgraded?
2 min answer
4 terms in this topic
Mobile App Architecture
Client architecture where the release cycle is not yours, old versions persist indefinitely, and the network is unreliable.
conceptPlatform Lifecycle Constraint
The operating system's rules about when your process runs, which are not negotiable and invalidate most assumptions carried over from server code.
patternStore-and-Forward Queue
A durable queue on the device that accepts writes while the network is absent and drains them in order when it returns - with an explicit policy for …
conceptUntrusted Client Timestamp
The recognition that a timestamp set by a device is user-editable input rather than a fact - so reporting periods, ordering and de-duplication must n…
Neighbouring topics
Edge, Mobile & IoT
General material on architecture beyond the data centre boundary.
Offline-First
Treating connectivity as an optimisation, with a local store as the source of truth.
Sync & Conflict Resolution
Two devices that both changed the same record while neither could see the other.
CRDTs
Data types that converge without coordination, and the semantics you must accept.
Mobile Release Strategy
Store review, staged rollout, and supporting versions you can never force off.
Push & Background Work
Delivery that is best-effort, and an operating system that will kill your process.
Device Identity
Identifying a thing rather than a person, and rotating a credential you cannot type.
Edge Compute Topologies
Regional, metro, on-premises and on-device, and what each tier is genuinely for.
Edge Functions
Short-lived compute at the CDN, its runtime limits, and what must stay at origin.
Edge Data Consistency
Replicated read state at hundreds of locations, and writes that still go to one.
IoT Ingest Architecture
Millions of small, unreliable, frequently duplicated messages arriving continuously.
Device Provisioning
Getting identity and configuration onto hardware at manufacture or first boot.
Fleet Management
Inventory, health, configuration and grouping across devices you will never see.
OTA Updates
Updating firmware over a flaky link, with rollback, and without bricking the device.
Constrained Protocols
MQTT, CoAP and their kin, chosen for power, packet size and intermittent links.
Device Telemetry at Scale
Deciding what a device sends, how often, and what is aggregated before it leaves.
Digital Twin
A server-side model of a physical thing's reported and desired state.
Edge Security & Attestation
Secure boot, hardware roots of trust, and proving what is running on a device.
Physical-World Failure Modes
Power loss, tampering, clock drift, thermal limits, and a truck through the fibre.