Samsung G5 Nullpointerexception On Setvisibility

Android app code operates successfully on a variety of devices, including as early as API 14 and up to API 19 (target). However, Samsung G5 v4.4.4 it throws NPE when attempting to

Solution 1:

Significant time was spent attempting to isolate the cause of this issue. We have not been able to reproduce the NPE exception on any other device or emulator except the Samsung G5 (Sprint) running 4.4.4. The crash occurs when attempting to use the setVisible method on an activity that had a background thread launched from within onCreate, which then launches a runsOnUiThread. Perhaps this was an improper practice that for some reason wasn't bothered by other systems, but the Samsung (at least) found it unacceptable.

In any case, we resolved this by showing/hiding the view associated with the activity (using for example v.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE) and some worthwhile refactoring. As indicated by the Android documentation, use Activity#setVisible method with caution.