I think it's one of the few things on my phone that I actually prefer the app version of.
Note that this is not an issue of speed, wikipedia in the browser is plenty fast. It's smoothness — the app's navigation model is better adapted to the use case, it's themed to match the OS perfectly, and there's no extraneous browser chrome or other little browserisms dragging down the experience.
If the iPad version got a Mac Catalyst port I'd probably use that on the desktop too.
One of my favourite features were the summaries (like ther hover cards that sometimes appear on desktop now) and reading lists, which are basically bookmarks but hyper-optimised for Wikipedia articles. All of it was something you could already do with a browser, but it was just way more streamlined.
- Access to the talk pages which are interesting to read on certain articles.
- Improved multi-language support (You can select your preferred languages and quickly switch while searching)
- The "My lists" feature.
- It has its own tabs so it's easier to manage.
I'm using "Wikipedia Beta" app.
That functionality is likely the same data as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby but with a better interface