appium: 1.5.2 - Android MainActivity is never detected by Appium

The problem

I already filed this against the beta1.5 version here and it got closed as a duplicate… but it is still failing on 1.5.2. For reference https://github.com/appium/appium/issues/6020

Our main App activity never manages to be detected as launched even though it is and I can visually confirm this.

The error message is as such:

[MJSONWP] Encountered internal error running command: Error: Error occured while starting App. Original error: me.app.android.dev/me.app.android.ui.MainActivity never started
    at Object.wrappedLogger.errorAndThrow (lib/logger.js:60:13)
    at ADB.callee$0$0$ (lib/tools/apk-utils.js:80:9)
    at tryCatch (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:67:40)
    at GeneratorFunctionPrototype.invoke [as _invoke] (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:315:22)
    at GeneratorFunctionPrototype.prototype.(anonymous function) [as throw] (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:100:21)
    at GeneratorFunctionPrototype.invoke (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/regenerator/runtime.js:136:37)
    at run (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/node_modules/core-js/library/modules/es6.promise.js:104:47)
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/node_modules/core-js/library/modules/es6.promise.js:115:28
    at flush (/usr/local/lib/node_modules/appium/node_modules/babel-runtime/node_modules/core-js/library/modules/$.microtask.js:19:5)
    at process._tickCallback (node.js:355:11)

Here is a gist to the full logs: https://gist.github.com/apallin/5d76b0297d8c0d9b111817d724536eaf

Environment

• Appium 1.5.2
• Last Appium to work 1.4.16
• Mac OSX 10.11.4 (15E65)
• Node version v0.12.2
• Mobile version Android 4.4.2
• Real Device
• Appium CLI