If the so called default report is set as the report to use for the Table Home Page report, then QuickBase will detect that there are a too high number of records which will hurt the performance of the app to sort and then start to display, and it will instead put up that search dialogue that you want.
But if you choose, rightly or wrongly, that the Table Home Page report is say the List All report with 49,000 records, then QuickBase assumes that you know what you are doing.
Bottom line - set the Table Home Page Report to be the default report.