Is my code a 'safe' singleton?

I was wondering if my code will produce a true singleton. I am creating an Android app, and all activities should access my API through one instance of the SyncApi class.

public class Api {

    private static SyncApi api = null;

    static {
        synchronized (api) {
            if (api == null) {
                api = new ApiFActory().getSyncApi();
            }
        }
    }

    public static SyncApi getInstance() {
        return api;
    }
}

Use of the class would look like:

SyncApi api = Api.getInstance();
api.logOn("jjnguy", "pa55w0rd");

In Java there’s an established idiom for creating a thread-safe singleton, due to Bill Pugh:

public class Api {
    private Api() { }

    private static class SingletonHolder { 
        public static final SyncApi INSTANCE = new ApiFactory().getSyncApi();
    }

    public static SyncApi getInstance() {
        return SingletonHolder.INSTANCE;
    }
}

This implementation is both lazy and completely thread-safe, without the need to explicit synchronization and checking. This has the advantage that it eliminates the possibility of subtle race conditions and redundant locking.

StackExchange Code Review Q#1673, answer score: 42