Reading books on a tiny smartphone screen can sometimes be quite a hassle. The issue is somewhat mitigated for digital books that scale text to adjust to the size of the display, but for things such as PDFs or comic books which have strict page dimensions, it's difficult to enlarge content in a way that doesn't also negatively impact the content layout or require a lot of zooming and panning around the page.

To tackle the problem, Google is announcing an update to the Play Books app specifically designed to allow for a better comic reading experience. To enable it, readers can simply rotate their phones into landscape mode and they'll be able to scroll through the entire story using only vertical swipes, no panning required. This sounds a lot like the "tap to scroll" feature we dug up back in August.

Additionally, Google has also made it easier to browse and discover new comics in Play Books. "We're offering a new comics destination and a bunch of beautifully curated series pages on the Google Play Store that organize volumes, issues and other editions of the top comic series," said Greg Hartrell, the Senior Product Manger for Google Play Books, in a blog post. The hope is that fans will be able to receive personalized recommendations for new comics and series they might also enjoy reading. This is also something we had found in a teardown from last month.

These new additions to Play Books will be rolling out to Android users in the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, India, Singapore, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa over the next few days, with iOS users set to receive the update soon after.