Exhibitions on Your Phone: App or Mobile Website?

Museums now offer audio guides, maps and catalogues on your phone. Some want you to install an app; others work in the browser. The difference matters more than it seems.

What the phone is for in a gallery

• An audio guide or short texts about selected works.
• A floor plan, often more current than the printed one.
• Tickets, opening hours and accessibility information.

The case for an app

An installed app can download content in advance, so it works in basements with no signal, and it can use the phone's location to offer the right text in the right room.

The case for the browser

A mobile website needs no installation, no storage space and no account, and it is always the latest version. For a single visit, that convenience usually wins.

How to judge any download page

Whatever the subject, a good download page tells you plainly whether you need the app at all, how to get it from a legitimate source and what the browser version can already do. An example that sets out exactly that comparison, in Traditional Chinese and from the gaming sector, is a page weighing an installable app against the mobile web version for one brand (搖錢樹娛樂城下載說明). Museums could learn from its structure: answer "do I need to install anything?" first.

Courtesy in the room

Use headphones, turn the screen brightness down and step aside to read. The work deserves your eyes more than your phone does.