You've already got a fancy smartphone with a decently-sized screen, so why pick up a separate e-book reader? There are plenty of reader apps available for the iPhone in Apple's app store, but now Google is bringing online access to its Book Search to mobile devices.

Google Book Search bring access to 1.5 million public domain titles to users of iPhones and, of course, the G1. While that doesn't include a lot of recent popular titles, it's a great selection of classic stories that stand the test of time. Google does OCR on the titles, converting the scanned images of pages into digital text so they can be rendered by your phone's browser using your choice of font size, handy if you think your screen's too small. While OCR technology has come a long way, it can still misinterpret passages, especially from scans of older books where the pages themselves may be worn down. In that case, Google give you the option to quickly swap between the text view and a scanned page view, so you should be able to work through any problem spots.

Right now Google advertises Book Search's iPhone and Android compatibility, but we're hoping it officially supports more smartphones soon. Some users have tried it on Symbian platforms and reported they couldn't get it working. If you just want a quick peek, you can even access it from your computer's web browser, even though the site's optimized for mobile devices and their screens. Check it out at books.google.com/m.

This story around the web: