Can I change the Android startActivity() transition animation?

I am starting an activity and would rather have a alpha fade-in for startActivity(), and a fade-out for the finish(). How can I go about this in the Android SDK?

Starting from API level 5 you can call overridePendingTransition immediately to specify an explicit transition animation:

startActivity();
overridePendingTransition(R.anim.hold, R.anim.fade_in);

or

finish();
overridePendingTransition(R.anim.hold, R.anim.fade_out);

See themes on android: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/themes.html.

Under themes.xml there should be android:windowAnimationStyle where you can see the declaration of the style in styles.xml.

Example implementation:

<style name="AppTheme" parent="...">

    ...

    <item name="android:windowAnimationStyle">@style/WindowAnimationStyle</item>

</style>

<style name="WindowAnimationStyle">
    <item name="android:windowEnterAnimation">@android:anim/fade_in</item>
    <item name="android:windowExitAnimation">@android:anim/fade_out</item>
</style>