Crash on instantiating UnityPlayer without Activity

Steps to repro:
1) Create an new Unity project
2) Switch platform to Android
3) Enable "Google Android Project".
4) Export the project and import it to Android Studio or Eclipse
5) Build it and launch on the device. It should start normally.
6) Open UnityPlayerActivity.java and change this line
mUnityPlayer = new UnityPlayer(this);
into
mUnityPlayer = new UnityPlayer(this.getApplication());
7) Build the project now and try to launch it on the device now. The application will crash with the error message as one above.

Tested with Unity Version 5.3.0f3 (fdc0acad47d2)
Tue, 01 Dec 2015 19:16:49 GMT
Branch: 5.3/release

Logcats are attached.