I just updated to the latest ionic release, and created test projects using the tabs and complex-list starter project templates, and they are the same. I’m not sure if that’s by design in this release, since technically the complex-list template IS a tabs template, but the tabs template was a good bit simpler to get started with.
EDIT: to prove I’m not crazy, here’s the plunker from the tabs template’s repo README: http://plnkr.co/edit/qYMCrt?p=preview showing the older tabs demo