I have an Activity calling a Service defined in IDownloaderService.aidl:

public class Downloader extends Activity {
 IDownloaderService downloader = null;
// ...

In Downloader.onCreate(Bundle) I tried to bindService

Intent serviceIntent = new Intent(this, DownloaderService.class);
if (bindService(serviceIntent, sc, BIND_AUTO_CREATE)) {
  // ...

and within the ServiceConnection object sc I did this

public void onServiceConnected(ComponentName name, IBinder service) {
  Log.w("XXX", "onServiceConnected");
  downloader = IDownloaderService.Stub.asInterface(service);
  // ...

By adding all kinds of Log.xx I found that the code after if(bindService(...)) actually goes BEFORE ServiceConnection.onServiceConnected is being called - that is, when downloader is still null - which gets me into trouble. All the samples in ApiDemos avoid this timing problem by only calling services when triggered by user actions. But what should I do to right use this service after bindService succeeds? How can I wait for ServiceConnection.onServiceConnected being called reliably?