In ES2Texture.create()

allowPad is passed in, and by default from PaintHelper is true.

Then pad is computed as:
        boolean pad =
            allowPad &&
            gl.isGLES2() &&
            context.isEdgeSmoothingSupported(format);

The isEdgeSmoothingSupported is only used here, returning true for desktop, and does an alpha check when isDevice. suggesting we kill isEdgeSmoothingSupported, and bring all the check back in here.

Looks like for both iOS and the Beagle (which are isGLES2()), gradients only work when the pad calculation is false. ios is currently modifying PaintHelper to pass allowPad==false, and I hacked the code to test my theory for the beagle.

There is a big comment section that goes with the pad, that seems to indicate that it should work.

context.canCreateNonPowTwoTextures()=false for beagle.

It could be that the real fix lies in upLoadPixels(), but I am still learning about what that does.