Yes, Safari is great but it's not perfect. If Opera can ship a browser with Flash support, I'm all over it.

Oh and looking at the Developer's information for Apple iPhone/Touch, it is easy to implement a panning/zooming option. It won't be hard to beat at all.

Opera isn't stupid. They wouldn't waste their time building a browser that's inferior to Safari. It's an ambitious company and they'll make sure it outdoes what's currently offered in Safari.

I'm certainly going to check it out once released.