Found out that if you activate 3-finger touch for screenshot, that disables the phone's ability to register more than 3 touch points. With that disabled I can now play the game again (and after several 4-fingered ones I'm now stuck at a 3-finger one)

> Seems weird a newer phone in the basically same line would downgrade to three.

You have data scientists busy analyzing telemetry all the time. It's conceivable someone figured "the data shows" most people don't even use 3 fingers at a time, much less 5+, so why not simplify the screen driver / hardware to save costs (or trade it for some improvement elsewhere)...

Newer phones are more optimized than older ones. On the market, optimized doesn't mean better.