The AppCompat Theme Theme.AppCompat.Light.NoActionBar provides a default
Drawable resource for AppCompatEditText. The resource is located in
@drawable/abc_edit_text_material.xml

https://chromium.googlesource.com/android_tools/+/7200281446186c7192cb02f54dc2b38e02d705e5/sdk/extras/android/support/v7/appcompat/res/drawable/abc_edit_text_material.xml

A Runtime Error is triggered in a scenario with the following conditions:

1) Rendering a large number of TextInputs in the screen with a key prop
2) Triggering re-render with setInterval

The scenario is also experienced with FlatList and ONLY using TextInput
component.

The following Runtime Error is triggered:

NullPointerException:tempt to invoke virtual method 'android.graphics.drawable.Drawable android.graphics.drawable.Drawable$ConstantState.newDrawable(android.content.res.Resources)

It is caused from the following line from abc_edit_text_material.xml

<item android:state_pressed="false" android:state_focused="false" android:drawable="@drawable/abc_textfield_default_mtrl_alpha"/>

I posted a Minimal Reproducible Example at facebook#17530 (comment)

This commit simply changes RNTester to use a custom drawable resource
for TextInput named @drawable/edit_text.

A Minimum Reproducible Example that triggers the Null Pointer Exception
Runtime Error NullPointerException:tempt to invoke virtual method 'android.graphics.drawable.Drawable android.graphics.drawable.Drawable$ConstantState.newDrawable(android.content.res.Resources)'

The following are the conditions that trigger the runtime error:

1) a large list (>100) TextInputs with key prop
2) with FlatList passing prop data=[{key: 1, key:2,.., key:5000]]
3) trigger re-render to ensure the NPE Runtime Error is triggered

The example is built using hooks useEffect similar to componentDidMount.
Original post is here
facebook#17530 (comment)

Adding the edit_text.xml custom drawable to the android template to fix
Null Pointer Exception Runtime Error from facebook#17530
The template will include the following settings in new reactnative
applications, more info on the issue, the cause of the error and the solution
in commit 0858d41