Update to Firebase Realtime Database Catching Error for 1 User in Standalone

I have a user that is trying to update data to Firebase on his Android Standalone (production, Xiaomi Redmi Note 7).

The simplified code below works for the devices I have tested and other users had to problems with it.

But somehow he gets an error shown in the screenshot below.

  1. Why does the error message for a Firebase update contain something about Expo?
  2. This might be irrelevant, but why is the inner catch (i.e. “Error 6”) not catching an error?

Expo CLI 3.13.1
System:
OS: macOS 10.14.5
Shell:
Binaries:
Node: 13.0.0
npm: 6.14.2
Watchman:
IDEs: VS Code
Android Studio:
Xcode:
npmPackages:
expo: ^36.0.0
react: 16.9.0
react-native: https://github.com/expo/react-native/archive/sdk-36.0.1.tar.gz
npmGlobalPackages:

export async function updateFirebase(
  updates
) {
  try {
    var updates = {};
    firebase
      .database()
      .ref()
      .update(updates)
      .then(() => {
        callback(true);
      })
      .catch(function(error) {
          Alert.alert("Error 6", JSON.stringify(error));
      });
  } catch (error) {
    Alert.alert("Error 7", JSON.stringify(error));
  }
}