CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidmemory
Eugene Chumak
Eugene Chumak

Reputation: 3192

Out of memory error: vast bitmap

My activity has listview and (apart from all other stuff) loads images from web and displays them in listview. I have access to 5 android devices: 2 HTC desire, LG P-350, one more phone and a tablet. Normally, everything works fine, but being launched on one of HTC desire, app tends to crash with NullPointerException, which is due to out of memory error (I guess so), this is the output:

05-03 14:41:23.818: E/dalvikvm(843): Out of memory: Heap Size=7367KB, Allocated=4991KB, Bitmap Size=16979KB

Later, logcat outputs stack trace of nullpointerexception where one of my static variables suddenly becomes null (the variable is initialized in app's root activity, is used across the app and for sure is not nulled in code). I suppose, it is nulled by system due to lack of memory. As far as I undesrstand, system tries to allocate bitmap as large as 17mb - I'm sure loaded images cant be that big. They are 100*70 jpegs and any of them weighs far less than 1mb. Another thing I dont understand is why I get this error only on one device - other devices work fine.

To my mind, this looks very strange and I can find no clue, I need advice.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 955

Answers (1)

epichorns
epichorns

Reputation: 1278

The reason is simple: the memory is not holding your JPG data per say, but rather its decompressed equivalent, which, needless to say, takes a lot more RAM space than the source files... Note that this 17 mb limit is for all your loaded bitmaps at once, not necessarily a single one.

I had to fight with similar problems in one of my programs (a custom Tile loader for a Mapquest Android API MapView object), and I ended up having to call the recycle() method of my bitmaps whenever possible, as well as manually oblige the system to garbage collect at strategic locations using System.gc()...

Sorry to not be the bearer of the best news...

You might solve your problems using the same strategy as I did: I essentially cache the loaded bitmaps in hard storage such as my external SD card, and reload them on the fly when needed, instead of attempting to hold everything in RAM.

Upvotes: 2

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