@Rukiri said:
Don't most high end smartphones already support 3.0 already and have for awhile? My S8 support 3.1.
This is true: any high-end device released after 2014, and many mid-range devices released after 2015, support GLES 3.0. Most of the 2016 flagships also support OpenGL ES 3.1, and Vulkan may be supported by a few already. (I'm however not aware of any mobile device supporting OpenGL ES 3.2, the latest specification to date. The Android dashboard stats do not track it yet, too.)
The problem is that most mobile developers, in order to maximize their target audience (and due to the nature of the Android device ecosystem, which wildly varies in performance and software versions/support), try to target even old, low-end devices (which can have visible impacts on the final game's visuals, even for higher-end devices). While the Godot developers can re-add a GLES 2.0 renderer, it will be a lot of work not only to create, but also to maintain since we'll have two supported renderers (GLES 3.0 and GLES 2.0).
The issue is analog to, for example, Web browsers: unless you have a very large budget, you have to make a choice between supporting old browsers (likely at the cost of user experience), or focusing on improved visuals and user experience for users with modern browsers, excluding users of old browsers in the process.