Can Activity.getIntent() ever return null?

Can Activity.getIntent() ever return null?

The documentation does not mention this as a possibility, so I am wondering if I have to check the result of getIntent() for null value before dereferencing it.

Yes, it can, but only in two cases:

In activity constructor:
Intent set up in internal attach method, called from Instrumentation class:

public Activity newActivity(Class<?> clazz, Context context, 
        IBinder token, Application application, Intent intent, ActivityInfo info, 
        CharSequence title, Activity parent, String id,
        Object lastNonConfigurationInstance) throws InstantiationException, 
        IllegalAccessException {
    Activity activity = (Activity)clazz.newInstance();
    ActivityThread aThread = null;
    activity.attach(context, aThread, this, token, 0, application, intent,
            info, title, parent, id,
            (Activity.NonConfigurationInstances)lastNonConfigurationInstance,
            new Configuration(), null, null);
    return activity;
}

therefore intent is always null in constructor.

After setIntent(null):
It's possible to change intent from outside of activity with setIntent().

In all other cases it can't.

It CAN be null when Your application was updated from the market while it was in the memory and relaunched again after the update. Maybe even If you will make update manually by Studio, or from .apk file, the same effect will be. Not sure, sorry.

I once updated application in Google Dev console and got several different NPE in Crashlitics in the lines with call getIntent(). It happened for all screens, where I used getIntent().getExtra() onCreate or even later in lifeCycle.

So... It looks ugly, but to avoid crashes I need to check intent for NULL value all the time I call getIntent and most of the times I call Finish() if the intent is null. But you can make other logic, ofc, for you purpose.

Always use onSaveInstanceState() callback method to avoid such situations, that will cause NPE due to null data from getIntentExtra(). Save the extra data to outState bundle and retrieve it on onCreate() callback by putting a null check to confirm if the activity was recreated or was a fresh one.
Example:

if (savedInstanceState != null) {
    extraData = savedInstanceState.getString(EXTRA_DATA);
} else {
    extraData = getIntent().getStringExtra(EXTRA_DATA);
}