cordova's configured gradle version unsupported in Android Studio 3.4

Bug Report

Android Studio 3.4 (just released) require a minimum Gradle version of 5.1.1, and so Gradle sync fails:

> Failed to apply plugin [id 'com.android.application']
   > Minimum supported Gradle version is 5.1.1. Current version is 4.10.3. If using the gradle wrapper, try editing the distributionUrl in /Users/jacob/workspace/f-tc/src-cordova/platforms/android/gradle/wrapper/gradle-wrapper.properties to gradle-5.1.1-all.zip

Problem

See above

What is expected to happen?

cordova android automatically configured for Gradle 5.1.

What does actually happen?

uses Gradle 4.10

Information

Command or Code

Environment, Platform, Device

Version information

Checklist

• I searched for existing GitHub issues
• I updated all Cordova tooling to most recent version
• I included all the necessary information above

[codinronan]

Hmmm I am using Gradle 5.1 in Android Studio 3.4 without any issues.

However I should note that when I am provided the opportunity to upgrade the Gradle plugin, I do so - the first time Android Studio is opened after doing cordova prepare. If you do not take that opportunity, for some reason if you do it later the upgrade doesn’t occur correctly and I get other errors and end up having to start over.

The useDeprecatedNdk setting in gradle.properties is also no longer accepted, NDK is removed in Android Studio 3.4, I end up needing to manually edit gradle.properties to remove it.

Getting cordova-android 8.1 released would be incredibly helpful, the build conflicts are mounting up.

[benitogf]

I faced a similar issue and was able to solve it updating cordova:

npm i -g cordova

then removing and adding back the android platform:

cordova platform remove android
cordova plarform add android

And finally adding the minSdk preference to config.xml:

<preference name="android-minSdkVersion" value="19"/>

but now I get a different error on graddle sync inside android studio:

The minSdk version should not be declared in the android manifest file. You can move the version from the manifest to the defaultConfig in the build.gradle file.