No, please tell the user. They've got their big boy pants on and can handle seeing one or two weird squiggles in the worst case, and might be able to actually diagnose and fix the issue themselves (without having to go through support) in the best case.
The last panel is infinitely more readable than parsing the whole chunk of logic above. Maybe you're just not used to this language's (I think this meme used C#) null operators.
Honestly, I don't care about design changes in android anymore because whether good or bad they're just going to change it for change's sake in no time anyways
You should, and you shouldn't let anyone stop you!