Seeing as Android runs on a lot more than just ARMv7, no, they didn't appear to make a mistake here at all.
Apple can tell developers to compile their app twice for ARMv7 w/ NEON & ARMv8-A64, but is Google going to go tell everyone to compile for ARMv6 (Android devices running this are still shipping), ARMv7 w/o NEON, ARMv7 w/ NEON, ARMv8 (not here yet on Android, but obviously coming), MIPS, X86, etc...?
> We have heard forever about Java (and other run-times) getting close to C in performance, but outside of specific test cases native code still runs circles around everything else out there.
The vast majority of the Java code in an Android app isn't performance-critical either. The code that actually renders an app is all in native anyway. The code to handle touch events and such isn't, but the difference between .1ms and .2ms isn't going to break the 16ms bank either.