Soft AP fails with some user apps

Upon attempting to give a photon wifi credentials from an android app, I consistently get a pop up "Error Please try running setup again after resetting your photon … " . I am using the Particle example app to log in (downloaded dec 9th, v0.3.2, git a7402b8). This works successfully when my Photon has tinker deployed. It does not work when I have our custom user application deployed. In both cases the same system firmware is used (git 91172bb). The firmware change log reads v0.4.7.

Here is my procedure.

  1. Confirm system parts 1 & 2 are over (“program-dfu” from modules path)
  2. Flash the relevant app. (cp-app or tinker)
  3. Confirm it’s there running. (about 20 sec)
  4. Enter listening mode manually, by holding button 3 sec.
  5. Find Photon name on list using most recent android app.
  6. Wait. Enter WiFi credentials, if possible.

Results:
Tinker app - it works.
cp app - it does not work. Error message pops up prior to entering WiFi credentials.

To track down possible causes, I looked at the difference in the android logs between the two attempts. I noticed that when it fails, the Android logs read : “failed to connect to /192.168.0.1 (port 5609) after 10000ms.”

What is it about out app that prevents the connection?

From the change log, I noticed that the this appears to be new:
https://docs.particle.io/reference/firmware/core/#wifi-dnsserverip-
Is that related?

PS. About 2-3 months ago, adding a wifi connection worked on our app. That used our previous app, previous android setup examples, and previous firmware.

@dan While we wait for advice from Particle, I will try calling calling Particle.process() more aggressively, to see if that matters.