Well, as it appears that Google isn’t interested in fixing it; I’ve decided to (for now) force using support library 27; at least it fixes the crashes on the few devices that support lib 28 crash on.
The fix that I’m using is adding the following into build.gradle however note, this is for a fix for android; only works for users of com.android.support libraries.
configurations.all {
resolutionStrategy.eachDependency { DependencyResolveDetails details ->
def requested = details.requested
if (requested.group == "com.android.support") {
if (!requested.name.startsWith("multidex")) {
details.useVersion "27.+"
}
}
}
}