Question

when I put the setContentView in thread as below, it crashes while running in emulator.

      new Thread(){
          public void run() {           
               setContentView(R.layout.main_layout);
          }  
      }.start();

Answer 1

You could try…

runOnUiThread(new Runnable(){

  public void run() {
    setContentView(R.layout.main_layout);

  }});

.. but be careful as the convention is to do setContentView(..); in onCreate() on the default thread there.