BitmapFactory OOM driving me nuts

Question

I've been doing a lot of searching and I know a lot of other people are experiencing the same OOM memory problems with BitmapFactory. My app only shows a total memory available of 4MB using Runtime.getRuntime ().totalMemory(). If the limit is 16MB, then why doesn't the total memory grow to make room for the bitmap? Instead it throws an error.

I also don't understand that if I have 1.6MB of free memory according to Runtime.getRuntime().freeMemory() why do I get an error saying "VM won't let us allocate 614400 bytes"? Seems to me I have plenty available memory.

My app is complete except for this problem, which goes away when I reboot the phone so that my app is the only thing running. I'm using an HTC Hero for device testing (Android 1.5).

At this point I'm thinking the only way around this is to somehow avoid using BitmapFactory.

Anyone have any ideas on this or an explanation as to why VM won't allocate 614KB when there's 1.6MB of free memory?

Answer 1

[Note that (as CommonsWare points out below) the whole approach in this answer only applies up to and including 2.3.x (Gingerbread). As of Honeycomb Bitmap data is allocated in the VM heap.]

Bitmap data is not allocated in the VM heap. There is a reference to it in the VM heap (which is small), but the actual data is allocated in the Native heap by the underlying Skia graphics library.

Unfortunately, while the definition of BitmapFactory.decode...() says that it returns null if the image data could not be decoded, the Skia implementation (or rather the JNI glue between the Java code and Skia) logs the message you’re seeing ("VM won't let us allocate xxxx bytes") and then throws an OutOfMemory exception with the misleading message "bitmap size exceeds VM budget".

The issue is not in the VM heap but is rather in the Native heap. The Natïve heap is shared between running applications, so the amount of free space depends on what other applications are running and their bitmap usage. But, given that BitmapFactory will not return, you need a way to figure out if the call is going to succeed before you make it.

There are routines to monitor the size of the Native heap (see the Debug class getNative methods). However, I have found that getNativeHeapFreeSize() and getNativeHeapSize() are not reliable. So in one of my applications that dynamically creates a large number of bitmaps I do the following.

The Native heap size varies by platform. So at startup, we check the maximum allowed VM heap size to determine the maximum allowed Native heap size. [The magic numbers were determined by testing on 2.1 and 2.2, and may be different on other API levels.]

long mMaxVmHeap     = Runtime.getRuntime().maxMemory()/1024;
long mMaxNativeHeap = 16*1024;
if (mMaxVmHeap == 16*1024)
     mMaxNativeHeap = 16*1024;
else if (mMaxVmHeap == 24*1024)
     mMaxNativeHeap = 24*1024;
else
    Log.w(TAG, "Unrecognized VM heap size = " + mMaxVmHeap);

Then each time we need to call BitmapFactory we precede the call by a check of the form.

long sizeReqd        = bitmapWidth * bitmapHeight * targetBpp  / 8;
long allocNativeHeap = Debug.getNativeHeapAllocatedSize();
if ((sizeReqd + allocNativeHeap + heapPad) >= mMaxNativeHeap)
{
    // Do not call BitmapFactory…
}

Note that the heapPad is a magic number to allow for the fact that a) the reporting of Native heap size is "soft" and b) we want to leave some space in the Native heap for other applications. We are running with a 3*1024*1024 (ie 3Mbytes) pad currently.