autolink not working on HTC - HtcLinkifyDispatcher

Question

I am using android:autoLink set to web on a TextView in my Android app to enable clickable links. But if I run this on my HTC Desire S upgraded to ICS, when I tap on one of the links I get the following exception

android.content.ActivityNotFoundException: Unable to find explicit activity class 
  {com.htc.HtcLinkifyDispatcher/
  com.htc.HtcLinkifyDispatcher.HtcLinkifyDispatcherActivity}; 
  have you declared this activity in your AndroidManifest.xml?

    at android.app.Instrumentation.checkStartActivityResult(Instrumentation.java:1634)
    at android.app.Instrumentation.execStartActivity(Instrumentation.java:1510)
    at android.app.Activity.startActivityFromChild(Activity.java:3519)
    at android.app.Activity.startActivityForResult(Activity.java:3271)
    at android.app.Activity.startActivity(Activity.java:3358)
    at woodsie.avalanche.info.InfoActivity.startActivity(InfoActivity.java:61)
    at android.text.style.LinkifyURLSpan.onClick(LinkifyURLSpan.java:73)

Attempts to register HtcLinkifyDispatcherActivityget me nowhere as the class is not on my build path.

Answer 1

The best article I found relating to this was The Linkify Problem: The Detection and the Mitigation.

But, rather than trying to intercept and replace the URLSpan class, I went a level lower and overrode the startActivity() on the parent Activity of the TextView.

@Override
public void startActivity(Intent intent) {
    try {
        /* First attempt at fixing an HTC broken by evil Apple patents. */
        if (intent.getComponent() != null 
                && ".HtcLinkifyDispatcherActivity".equals(intent.getComponent().getShortClassName()))
            intent.setComponent(null);
        super.startActivity(intent);
    } catch (ActivityNotFoundException e) {
        /*
         * Probably an HTC broken by evil Apple patents. This is not perfect,
         * but better than crashing the whole application.
         */
        super.startActivity(Intent.createChooser(intent, null));
    }
}

Hacky but simple, and seems to work.