is there a way to disable hardware acceleration only for android 4.0.3?

Question

I have recently stumbled upon an issue with android 4.0.3, where Im getting the following Exception as soon as the application starts (on other android versions it works fine):

java.lang.NullPointerException
at android.view.GLES20RecordingCanvas.drawPatch(GLES20RecordingCanvas.java:97)
at android.graphics.NinePatch.draw(NinePatch.java:125)
at android.graphics.drawable.NinePatchDrawable.draw(NinePatchDrawable.java:189)
at android.widget.ImageView.onDraw(ImageView.java:892)
at android.view.View.draw(View.java:10978)
at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:2887)
at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:2489)
at android.view.ViewGroup.drawChild(ViewGroup.java:2885)
at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchDraw(ViewGroup.java:2489)
at android.view.View.getDisplayList(View.java:10415)
at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchGetDisplayList(ViewGroup.java:2597)
at android.view.View.getDisplayList(View.java:10380)
at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchGetDisplayList(ViewGroup.java:2597)
at android.view.View.getDisplayList(View.java:10380)
at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchGetDisplayList(ViewGroup.java:2597)
at android.view.View.getDisplayList(View.java:10380)
at android.view.ViewGroup.dispatchGetDisplayList(ViewGroup.java:2597)
at android.view.View.getDisplayList(View.java:10380)
at android.view.HardwareRenderer$GlRenderer.draw(HardwareRenderer.java:842)
at android.view.ViewRootImpl.draw(ViewRootImpl.java:1910)
at android.view.ViewRootImpl.performTraversals(ViewRootImpl.java:1634)
at android.view.ViewRootImpl.handleMessage(ViewRootImpl.java:2442)
at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:137)
at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4424)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:511)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:784)
at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:551)
at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)

This is related to having hardware acceleration enabled, as soon as I disable it on the manifest the application starts working just fine.

By doing a search I found a log (inside that doc search for "drawPatch") on some conversation of Romain Guy, where he discuss a little bit of what could be causing this, although there is no workaround or fix proposed, I wonder if I should disable hardware acceleration only for this version of android, or if there is a workaround for it?

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

You currently cannot disable hardware acceleration at the window level by code.

Only enable it. I suggest you to Disable it by default in your manifest:

<application android:hardwareAccelerated="false">
    <activity ... />
    <activity android:hardwareAccelerated="false" />
</application>

and then enable it to all the other versions:

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT != Build.VERSION_CODES.ICE_CREAM_SANDWICH_MR1) {
            getWindow().setFlags(
                    WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_HARDWARE_ACCELERATED,
                    WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_HARDWARE_ACCELERATED);
        }

You can disable hardware acceleration for an individual view at runtime with the following code:

myView.setLayerType(View.LAYER_TYPE_SOFTWARE, null);

This info is available in Android - Controlling Hardware Acceleration