Setting Android Theme background color
<resources>
<!-- Base application theme. -->
<style name="AppTheme" parent="android:Theme.Holo.NoActionBar">
<item name="android:windowBackground">@android:color/black</item>
</style>
</resources>
Okay turned out that I made a really silly mistake. The device I am using for testing is running Android 4.0.4, API level 15.
The styles.xml file that I was editing is in the default values folder. I edited the styles.xml in values-v14 folder and it works all fine now.