When you do a release build in a bare React Native app with expo-updates, the JavaScript bundle that is included is the most recently published bundle - that is, the last bundle that was generated when you ran expo publish. Typically you will want to publish just before doing a new release build.
🚨 If you ejected from the managed workflow: even if you have published before, after ejecting and before the first time you do a release build for iOS (yarn ios --configuration Release) or Android (yarn android --variant Release), you must run expo publish once. You may want to verify that the app.manifest and app.bundle files described in expo.fyi/embedded-assets are included in your project as expected.
If you do not need over-the-air updates, you may want to remove expo-updates from your app. To remove it, do the opposite of the steps described in the expo-updates installation instructions. It is included by default in projects generated with expo init or expo eject because we expect that most users will want this functionality.