I think the problem is that setTitle is called before setContentView.
Looking at:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6867076/getactionbar-returns-null
This happens on API 11 and 12, but not on 13 and above.

This fixes it, but will probably leave the title not set correctly in those cases.

Good insight! I replicated this behaviour. I moved the call right after setContentView and it seems it to work too, but I will leave the null check in Compat for good measure.

The other places in the code where setTitle and setSubtitle are called seem safe (after setContentView)

Thanks!
Maybe in the long term what we want is to revisit this by making the assumption explicit and checking them.
The checks for the null action bar here might end up hiding a real issue. But let's do it for 2.0.1.