When it comes to the Bible on a PDA or smartphone, there’s only one serious choice: Olive Tree. Yes, you can mess around with various other ebook readers and source a free version of a copyright free bible, but it’ll be plain text with poor search functions and you’ll simply be eyeing up the real thing enviously. With BibleReader, you get cross platform books, every version/translation under the sun (even if only some are free) and, most importantly, terrific search and bookmarking functions.

You’d have thought the Word of God was free, wouldn’t you? After all, it’s not as if the Author is going to want any royalties! The reality is that most translations of the Bible in most languages are copyrighted to the translators and publishers – after all, they’ve got to make a living too, or at least pay their expenses. So it’s not unreasonable to pay for a commercial, proof-read and double-checked translation in a particular style. At the same time, there will be some for whom the Bible has to be free, by definition. Olive Tree specialise in Christian software and texts and manage to please everyone by producing the polished Biblereader for free, along with a number of basic translations. You need free, just use these and be happy. You need language that flows a little better, has a commentary and which has more modern styling, you hunt around for some of the commercial, copyrighted translations.

Except that you don’t have to hunt very far, because BibleReader cleverly includes a full online Catalog, with (literally) hundreds of bible translations (in several languages), commentaries, Bible Study Tools and Christian ebooks. The word ‘hundreds’ sounds like I’m exagerating, but I’m not – there are more things to read here than you or I could realistically consume in an entire lifetime.

Items which are free can be downloaded over-the-air immediately, while those which have a price shunt you off to the Olive Tree web site to add said items to your account. After which they’re available for download in the application itself. It’s all rather well thought out. Even more so when you realise, as a potential freeloader, that all the free items are also collated into a dedicated section in the Catalog, giving you maximum content for minimum effort.

Within each Bible, there’s a clear and colourful ‘Verse’ chooser, letting you drill down to any verse in the Bible with only three finger taps. Very elegant and quick. If a particular word or phrase has come to mind then the Search function has every option you could wish for to help you track it down, including phrase, ‘all words’ and ‘any word’ matching.

The BibleReader experience is sumptuous in a low graphics way. This isn’t the prettiest application around but it’s superbly implemented and will prove an excellent source of inspiration and reference for many, many iPhone and iPod Touch users.