The search field is visible, but the keyboard does not show up. I can't even paste into the search field. This has happened to me on many occasions and in the past, I would restart the phone to make it work. Restarting the phone does not help now. I have a screenshot if you'd like but don't see a way to upload it here.

Looks like this is a bug in landscape mode. If you use search in portrait mode first, then rotate to landscape, it works, though. We will address this in 4.8.2.