SysUtils﹕ ApplicationContext is null in ApplicationStatus (WebView)

Question

I can see something strange at WebView based app start. It doesn't affect the app at all but I'm curious why the error appears. Nothing crashes, everything seems to be ok, but the error...

Here is logcat

Loading com.google.android.webview version 42.0.2311.137 (code 2311137)
I/LibraryLoader﹕ Time to load native libraries: 2 ms (timestamps 3347-3349)
I/LibraryLoader﹕ Expected native library version number "",actual native library version number ""
V/WebViewChromiumFactoryProvider﹕ Binding Chromium to main looper Looper (main, tid 1) {2d3b4b2c}
I/LibraryLoader﹕ Expected native library version number "",actual native library version number ""
I/chromium﹕ [INFO:library_loader_hooks.cc(112)] Chromium logging enabled: level = 0, default verbosity = 0
I/BrowserStartupController﹕ Initializing chromium process, singleProcess=true
W/art﹕ Attempt to remove local handle scope entry from IRT, ignoring
E/SysUtils﹕ ApplicationContext is null in ApplicationStatus
W/chromium﹕ [WARNING:resource_bundle.cc(286)] locale_file_path.empty()
I/chromium﹕ [INFO:aw_browser_main_parts.cc(63)] Load from apk succesful, fd=34 off=6850672 len=3697
I/chromium﹕ [INFO:aw_browser_main_parts.cc(76)] Loading webviewchromium.pak from, fd:35 off:7953036 len:1161174
I/Adreno-EGL﹕ <qeglDrvAPI_eglInitialize:379>: QUALCOMM Build: 01/15/15, ab0075f, Id3510ff6dc
W/AudioManagerAndroid﹕ Requires BLUETOOTH permission
W/chromium﹕ [WARNING:data_reduction_proxy_config.cc(150)] SPDY proxy OFF at startup
W/art﹕ Attempt to remove local handle scope entry from IRT, ignoring
W/AwContents﹕ onDetachedFromWindow called when already detached. Ignoring
I/GAv4﹕ Google Analytics 4.5.0/7327 is starting up. To enable debug logging on a device run:
    adb shell setprop log.tag.GAv4 DEBUG
    adb logcat -s GAv4

I suppose the error comes from here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/base/+/master/android/java/src/org/chromium/base/SysUtils.java

A few lines of WebView initialisation

...
// load url in webView
webView.loadUrl(webViewUrl);
webView.setWebViewClient(new MyAppWebViewClient());

// implement WebChromeClient inner class
// we will define openFileChooser for select file from camera
webView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient() {
...

What's going on?

Answer 1

What is happening here is:

The ApplicationStatus is not initialized yet, so the context cannot be obtained from it. This is a completely natural situation, so no error should be raised. Logging this as an error was an exaggeration from the coder.

However:

This does not cause any real problem, because the function tries to get a context object only to perform yet another check to assess the performance capabilities of the device. Since it sometimes fails to call the "isLowRamDevice()", it will just carry on performing the rest of the checks. So worst case scenario is not being able to detect a low-end phone at this point, and subsequent checks will be made.

Also it is completely normal that "I see this error in a Lollipop device (Nexus 10) but not in a JellyBean device", because the function has an early return if it detects anything below KitKat. (// Any pre-KitKat device cannot be considered 'low-end')