@lduboeuf I deleted the first (oldest) 10000 records from voice_events and then restarted the phone and now I have again calls and texts history.

interesting, so we have an issue when voice history is getting too big.
That is why i've done a way to clean them in the UI meanwhile.
But we could launch a clean process each time we reboot the phone to avoid that

Before pruning the voice_events table:

dave@salsero:~$ sqlite3 history.sqlite.ota24
SQLite version 3.22.0 2018-01-22 18:45:57
sqlite> select count() from voice_events;
16478
sqlite> select count() from text_events;
4254

Ok, it is not so big database. Already tested with more than that without issue iirc.

dave@salsero:~$ sqlite3 history.sqlite.ota24
SQLite version 3.22.0 2018-01-22 18:45:57
sqlite> select count() from voice_events;
16478
sqlite> select count() from text_events;
4254

OK, the problem is probably solved. It seems that the problem is related to the size of history database. It probably just coincided with OTA-25 install and subsequent reboot. In my case, I have kept the history database from the very start of Ubuntu Touch.. When moving to newer phone I have always copied the call and SMS history. I use to prune the SMS history but not the call history.. Now the database probably grew to such big size that the history-daemon failed to parse the db in time (which is probably hardcoded somewhere) and timeouted. After pruning the call history using sqlite3 tool both dialer and messaging app work with the history again.

Just for curiosity, what the output of:
sqlite3 /home/phablet/.local/share/history-service/history.sqlite "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM text_events;"

Anybody knows if there are any limits imposed to history size?

There is no limit afaik, but bigger db means slower queries. But still should'nt freeze the app.
Meanwhile, after a backup you can remove the database to avoid that freeze

DBUS error log says:
Using database at "/home/phablet/.local/share/history-service/history.sqlite
Activating service name='com.canonical.HistoryService'
Failed to activate service 'com.canonical.HistoryService': timed out

Do you see more logs before that one ?.
Nothing have been done regarding history db on Xenial. Wonder what is happening.