Game freezes when opening the main menu in Minecraft 1.21.81

After updating to Minecraft version 1.21.81 on Android, the game frequently freezes when trying to open the main menu or pressing "Play". The issue happens consistently across multiple devices, even without any mods, resource packs, or third-party changes. The game becomes unresponsive and needs to be closed from the task manager.

This problem started only after updating to version 1.21.81. Previous versions (such as 1.21.80) worked fine on the same devices.