On the usage of Java equality operator [duplicate]

Answer 1

== compares object reference contents i.e. str1 and str2 and not object contents while equals() does compare object contents i.e (objects pointed by str1 and str2)

Also check this :

String str1 = "Hi there";
String str3 = "Hi there";

str1 == str3 => true

This is because JVM handles string literals in different way. Check here