A good moment to switch off the automatic updating, albeit, this issue might then crop up with Android 11 or whatever. "Starting from Android API 28 Google" quite a way away's for most all present users and not affecting to OpenPandemic game plan (not going to be on Android).

First check what BOINC Apk you have. If it's 7.4.53 and the app-store is not offering 7.16.3 then sideload from https://boinc.berkeley.edu/dl/boinc_7.16.3.apk. This method worked for me on my phone (You'll be told to temp switch off the 'other software' security.

Not so fast! It isn't really working. I had to change Android settings to allow it to work in the background (added to list of apps that won't be put to sleep), but now whenever I try to open the app I get a message popup that says:

Volunteer computing app detected
Another volunteer computing app is running on this device. Only one version can run at a time.
EXIT

I look in the list of apps to switch to and get the same message.

So I can't see or manage it and my guess is that it isn't running.

If I take it off the list of apps to never put to sleep, I can get into the BOINC user interface but computing stops every time I put down the phone. Any ideas?

That seems to be a bug in that version, I had the same effect with it. Had to return to 7.4.53 to get that fixed. Others report the same problem.