I am hesitant to try it out on my N900, since the old version works fine for me, but I just gave it a try in Scratchbox: It works, but it still has some glitches:

• Every time I visit the search page, 'substring search' is deselected, even if it was selected during the last search.
• If 'substring search' is marked, it doesn't find entries that start with the typed letters. To try this out, try 'maemo' with the german dump. Without 'substring search' this finds 'Maemo' and 'Maemo.org', with 'substring search' it only finds 'Rubus chamaemorus'.
• Search as you type does not work. I have to hit Tab from within the search field to actually start the search.