Photon SoftAP mode - mobile cannot obtain address

Would love an update to this issue, we have installed 100s of the older photons (with 4 random letters in the softAP instead of 6) no problem. Now we have just made 200 more, exactly the same circuit, but now getting “couldn’t get IP address” issues!!! Please help, this is really bad for us.
Clearly an update to firmware caused this, specifically changing the startup antenna to internal.