TabSpec activity is unable to bind to a service

To reproduce:

1) Create class that extends TabActivity
2) on the tabHost add a tab which has content set to an activity which
binds to a service via IPC

The activity binds fine normally but not when used as tab content.

DDMS reports (in my case):
ActivityManager::Binding with unknown activity: android.os.BinderProxy@436dd168

Log messages in the service verifies that the onBind method is never called.

 

 

 

 

 

Comment 2 by olivier....@gmail.com, Jun 28, 2009

Using getApplicationContext().bindService instead of just bindService on your
activity solves the problem as it is using the higher level application context.

Comment 6 by sashib, Apr 17, 2010 
god bless you oliver, took me a whole day to find this thread and the getApplicationContext() solved the issue... 
wish they would cover this better in the docs
Comment 8 by ivantis3, Apr 25, 2010 
quite helpful, thank you.
I was pulling my hair out trying to find the problem with this code!