As I said, I think the problem in my empty project was in line
Vec2 origin = Director::getInstance()->getVisibleOrigin(); // app may freeze here on one my device
so I tried to count, how many times Director::getInstance() mey return null (on device, build with 3.12) - zero times. Confused.
int s = 0; for (int iii = 0; iii < 999999; iii++) { Director * d = Director::getInstance(); if (0==d) s++; // it remains zero; }