Since version 1.21.1 nginx now returns a HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request error when there is a space in the request url.

From the nginx official changelog:

*) Change: now nginx always returns an error if spaces or control
   characters are used in the request line.

My server is still receiving some requests with spaces in the GET query string from some older Android devices. I know that spaces in the url need to be encoded, but I have a few special cases where this is not possible right now.

Is there any option to turn off this new behaviour without having to revert to version 1.21.0?