Oddly enough, I got a text message from etisalat today with the new firmware, and it appears to properly support arabic (versus the old placeholder boxes).
I of course can't confirm, since I don't read arabic...
Installer has been replaced with Cydia, which has an (admittedly) smaller repo than Installer at the moment. But don't forget you should have access to AppStore, which works very well (Remote is such a great 'no brainer' app...)
Regarding maps, mine is *finally* updating my location...this was a feature that never worked before. Of course it's not true GPS, but hey, it's something.
Offline maps also appears to work just fine on mine, although I haven't tested it thoroughly.
SMSD?