Today we expected Apple to announce a new iPhone (or two), news of the Palm Pre’s initial sales and other all-around Monday-ness – we didn’t expect a fresh new version of Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile, but that’s exactly what we got.

Opera Mobile 9.7 beta adds Opera Turbo, a server-size compression technology (à la Skyfire) that shrinks requested data before sending it to your handset; this saves time, particularly if you’re on a slower connection (EDGE) and is designed to make the mobile Web a bit more speedy.  It also decreases the amount of bandwidth required to browse the web up to 80%.  That’s good if you have a limited amount of bandwidth per month on your data plan.

In our quick test of 9.7, we certainly felt the speed increase; pages loaded quickly, panning and zooming was smoother and less jerky, and the entire experience feels more desktop-esque.

View a more complete list of Opera Mobile 9.7’s features or download the new version.