You are correct that this is allowed by the Java spec (1). Final fields are guaranteed to happen before reference assignment, and strings are explicitly mention

You are correct that this is allowed by the Java spec (1). Final fields are guaranteed to happen before reference assignment, and strings are explicitly mentioned. It appears to be an ARM JVM bug. 1. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.html#jls-17.5 https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-17.htm...