RuntimeException: Unable to instantiate application

This is a verbose error message raised by underlying framework when dalvik re-install .apk file and trying to reuse or recycle the previous opened activity/view from the same package (if you haven't closed the previous installed app yet). It has nothing to do with your app, moreover, it is very unlikely that your app will get freezed or crashed cause by this verbose error message on end user's device.

It seems that this dalvik verbose error log only happend on Android 4.0 system, I've tested it myself on Android 3.2 and 2.3.3 running environment, where you cannot replicate to get this message shown on neither of them. A similar question has been discussed before at here and someone has filled a bug report in Android Issues Tracker.

I don't think you should concern too much about this verbose error log at the moment, if you look more logs before and after this red error in Logcat, you can see the full story and find that the previous opened activity/view (which are marked as died state) get killed and the newly re-installed one get poped ultimately.

I have been getting same error when I tried connect to the internet with JSOUP inside my application class. It was tricky, because application run on emulator but not on actual device. It turned out, that I just used JSOUP library wrong. Loading page in new thread solved my problem.

Hope I helped someone.

I realise it's a very old question, but this may be useful anyway. I've found that when I observe this error in my own development, it's due to the previously running instance of my app not closing down neatly, for example by shutting down background threads prior to exit.