Gmail mobile app hits 2.0; Available for J2ME and BlackBerry phones

Yesterday Google (NSDQ: GOOG) released a new version of its GMail app for J2ME-enabled and BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) phones. The main goal was to make the application faster and more reliable, hence the code has been rearchitected to push all the processing to the background. In addition, the client-side caching scheme has been improved and “every bottleneck piece of code” optimized.

So what’s the new in the version 2.0, you ask?

* It’s faster - overall you should find the application faster, which includes smoother scrolling and no freezing.
* Multiple accounts management - now you can manage more than a single GMail acount from a single app.
* Multiple mobile email drafts - meaning you could prepare more emails in no-signal areas (i.e. metro).
* Shortcuts - great for QWERTY phone owners, which for instance could hit “z” to undo, “k” to go to a newer conversation, and “j” to go to an older conversation.
* Basic offline support - allows reading of most recent emails even when there is no signal. Additionally, outgoing messages will be saved in the Outbox and sent automatically when you’re back in coverage.

Like GMail? Hop over to m.google.com/mail from your phone and download Gmail for mobile 2.0 now!

A short demo video of the application follows after the jump.