Mobile strategy feels better suited to a phone when a short session still contains one useful decision. A readable interface helps, pausing is optional, and progression shouldn’t play the game for you.
Which games get that balance right? I’m especially interested in tower defense, and in the one design choice that makes a game work well on a phone.
These answers point to a useful pattern: good mobile strategy doesn’t have to be simple, but it does need to tolerate interruption. Unciv removes real-time pressure, Into the Breach preserves a run cleanly, Landrule compresses a full match, and Arknights keeps stages short. So the better test may be: how quickly can you return to one meaningful decision after unlocking your phone? That seems more useful than judging by genre alone.