The bottom search layout is only available on phone devices. Given the form factor and the heft of such device its hard to hold with one hand and navigate it from the bottom. We will look at iPad optimizations at a later date, for the next few releases we are keeping things as is.

We have disabled the recent tabs from showing on startpage, we will address that use case differently from before, most likely by adding one shortcut on startpage that gives access to all recent tabs from desktop, two steps but more choice.

You can still access recent tabs from the Tab UI