I figured it out, and the answer was very different from what I expected.
This piece of code was included in the alarm clock sample from Android 2, in the AlarmAlert.java Activity:
@Override
protected void onStop() {
super.onStop();
// Don't hang around.
finish();
}
For reference, you can see the file from the example code in Git's past right here, containing the above onStop
function. It never caused a problem in Android 2.
But in Android 4, if the phone was off, this onStop
would fire right before the phone woke up, effectively "minimizing" the Activity. Once I removed this function, it immediately worked again.
But I wonder, is this the problem that other people like @radley and @Guardanis are getting? It seems unlikely, but please let me know if this fixes your problems too.
If you're visiting this answer in the future, and you're getting this problem, what I would try is:
Take out any
onStop
functions.Add this code to the Activity:
getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_SHOW_WHEN_LOCKED | WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_DISMISS_KEYGUARD | WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON | WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_TURN_SCREEN_ON);
Make sure you're using a full screen theme, and not a dialog theme.
This didn't make a difference for me, but you could try setting showOnLockScreen explicitly in the manifest:
<activity android:name="com.example.MyActivity" android:showOnLockScreen="true"/>
A second thing that didn't make a difference for me but you might try is adding the flag
WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_FULLSCREEN
I hope this helps other people!