Difference between Activity Context and Application Context

Question

This has me stumped, I was using this in Android 2.1-r8 SDK:

ProgressDialog.show(getApplicationContext(), ....);

and also in

Answer 1

Use getApplicationContext() if you need something tied to a Context that itself will have global scope.

If you use Activity, then the new Activity instance will have a reference, which has an implicit reference to the old Activity, and the old Activity cannot be garbage collected.