getApplication() vs. getApplicationContext()

Question

I couldn\'t find a satisfying answer to this, so here we go: what\'s the deal with Activity/Service.getApplication() and Context.getApplicationContext()

Answer 1

Compare getApplication() and getApplicationContext().

getApplication returns an Application object which will allow you to manage your global application state and respond to some device situations such as onLowMemory() and onConfigurationChanged().

getApplicationContext returns the global application context - the difference from other contexts is that for example, an activity context may be destroyed (or otherwise made unavailable) by Android when your activity ends. The Application context remains available all the while your Application object exists (which is not tied to a specific Activity) so you can use this for things like Notifications that require a context that will be available for longer periods and independent of transient UI objects.

I guess it depends on what your code is doing whether these may or may not be the same - though in normal use, I'd expect them to be different.