Developing applications for small devices requires you to keep certain strategies in mind during the design phase. It is best to strategically design an application for a small device before you begin coding. Correcting the code because you failed to consider all of the "gotchas" before developing the application can be a painful process.

Here are some design strategies to consider:

• Keep it simple. Remove unnecessary features, possibly making those features a separate, secondary application.
  
  
• Smaller is better. This consideration should be a "no brainer" for all developers. Smaller applications use less memory on the device and require shorter installation times. Consider packaging your Java applications as compressed Java Archive (jar) files.
  
  
• Minimize run-time memory use. To minimize the amount of memory used at run time, use scalar types in place of object types. Also, do not depend on the garbage collector. You should manage the memory efficiently yourself by setting object references to null when you are finished with them. Another way to reduce run-time memory is to use lazy instantiation, only allocating objects on an as-needed basis. Other ways of reducing overall and peak memory use on small devices are to release resources quickly, reuse objects, and avoid exceptions.