TabSpec activity is unable to bind to a service

To reproduce:

1) Create class that extends TabActivity
2) on the tabHost add a tab which has content set to an activity which
binds to a service via IPC

The activity binds fine normally but not when used as tab content.

DDMS reports (in my case): 
ActivityManager::Binding with unknown activity: android.os.BinderProxy@436dd168

Log messages in the service verifies that the onBind method is never called.

Using getApplicationContext().bindService instead of just bindService on your
activity solves the problem as it is using the higher level application context.