I have seen this on other hardware (traditional windows laptop), and I have seen it happen now on fields other than taxonomy fields, but it seems most common touch screen devices.
Your guess on the location rules resetting seems plausible because I have noticed that once the meta box disappears… if I then save the post as a draft, the data/taxonomy I entered will save as expected. When the page refreshes (after the draft saves) the meta box is back where it is expected.
JW
