I have the latest Opera beta loaded on my 8830 and it works a lot better than the previous beta. As far as the zooming problem, try this.
In the Opera intro page, they talk about using the number keys to quickly navigate around a web page:
Up
2
Left 4______6 Right
8
Down
I found that if I press the "5" button, it zooms me back out after zooming into a page. Works great!
Hope this helps.