android.app.RemoteServiceException: at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage when sending notifications

Question

I use a service to display notifications. On some rare devices (3 users among 50 000 every day), I have the the following crash (which can be seen in the Google Play developer console ; only on Android 4.x devices) :

android.app.RemoteServiceException: 
  at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1509)
  at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:110)
  at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:193)
  at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5327)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method:0)
  at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:515)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:824)
  at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:640)
  at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method:0)

My notifications are made with a code like this (old style notifs, deprecated in Android 6+ but works anyway ; the bug is on Android 4.x where the code is not deprecated):

Notification notification = new Notification(icon, "Custom Notification", when);
NotificationManager mNotificationManager = (NotificationManager) getSystemService(NOTIFICATION_SERVICE);
RemoteViews contentView = new RemoteViews(getPackageName(), R.layout.custom_notification);
contentView.setImageViewResource(R.id.notifWeatherImageView, WeatherRowTools.getImageForWeatherCode(weatherCodeString));

....some stuff here...

notification.contentView = contentView;
notification.contentIntent = contentIntent;
notification.flags |= Notification.FLAG_AUTO_CANCEL;
notification.defaults = 0;
mNotificationManager.notify(1, notification);

Any idea on how to solve this issue?

Thanks a lot !!!

Answer 1

I saw similar issues in my builds - Only Kitkat Devices are throwing these in large numbers - Android OS version: 4.4.4, 4.4.2, 4.2.2, 4.0.4

We fixed a similar issue by changing the drawable used by Notification .

.addAction(R.drawable.ic_forward_black_24dp, VIEW_ACTION, pendingIntentView);

We stopped using Vector Assets and started using Image Assets.

R.drawable.ic_forward_black_24dp no longer uses xml file (Vector Asset) and instead we now use png file (Image Asset).