No, the problem is not solved, and will not be solved.
In order to contact the database, the original Sphider supports
mysql commands.
If your PHP version requires
mysqli functions, consequently the original Sphider will fail.
For more details, please take notice of
http://phppot.com/php/mysql-vs-mysqli-in-php/
The original Sphider is unsupported since more than 8 years, so your problem will not be solved.
Use Sphider-plus instead.
Tec