Opera has released Mobile Mini 2.0, a new versions of its web browser for Java-enabled mobile phones. The free software offers improved access to webmail and mobile news, as well as integrating download functions into the phone.

New features in version 2.0 include:

Content download: Download images, MP3s, etc. directly to the phone.
• New skins: Make Opera Mini your own by selecting from several new and bold skins to suit your mood.
• Multisearch: Opera Mini offers advanced searching functionality by allowing users to select extra search engines for the home page.
• Speed dial: Bookmarks displayed on the home page are assigned a shortcut key combination, giving users faster and easier access to their favorite sites.
• Visual navigation: Quick and smooth horizontal panning when browsing backwards or forwards.

Opera Mini uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to the phone. Opera Mini claims it offers the same speed and usability as the Opera mobile browser and uses Opera’s proxy servers to quickly render pages, offering text that is readable on small screens and images that download quickly while still maintaining reasonable quality.

An advanced version of Opera Mini also has better compression support for faster downloading, and the ability to store most web pages in memory rather than breaking them into multiple pages.