FirebaseApp fails to intialize with ionic cordova-android 6.4.0, but works on other version

Ionic Framework
1

Ionic app with cordova-android version 6.4.0 fails to initialize firebaseApp with below exception
“java.lang.IllegalStateException: Default FirebaseApp is not initialized in this process com.c***. Make sure to call FirebaseApp.initializeApp(Context) first.”

Ionic app with cordova-android version 6.3.0 gets firebaseApp initialized successfully without any issue.

Also, plain cordova app with cordova-android 6.4.0 without ionic framework works as expected.

Only ionic apps built using cordova-android 6.4.0 has the stated issue.

Thanks.