Google Play Services 8.4.0 breaks Google Cloud Messaging for Android if iOS is also used

Question

There are several posts that describe aspects of this issue, but there hasn\'t yet been a satisfying answer, so I\'m attempting to collate them all here in hopes of getting

Answer 1

Today I finally got an acknowledgement from Google that this was in fact a bug, and that the fix was rolled out this week. I can also confirm that the behavior I was seeing in 8.3.0 now works the same in 8.4.0, so apparently the fix was done entirely on the server side.

I was also advised that it is in fact best practices to partition your GCM messages on the server side between those going to iOS devices and those going to Android devices, as there may be times in the future where different payloads may be needed for the different platforms.