Well, you didn't post your code, so I can't be 100% sure, but my guess is that there are other references to the same Drawables somewhere, references that are NOT SoftReferences. That would keep it from being garbage-collected.
Also, there is a difference between weak references and soft ones. It you really want to make sure it is garbage-collected sooner rather than later (it sounds like this is what you want), use a weak reference not a soft one. A typical example of the difference is that the Sun/Oracle JVM will clear all soft references before returning an OOM. That said, there is no requirement on the JVM that it actually treat WeakReferences and SoftReferences differently. (http:// weblogs.java.net/blog/2006/05/04/understanding-weak-references). Finally, there is actually a well known but in earlier versions (1.5, 1.6) of Android that is the opposite of what you describe: it reports that SoftReferences are being GC'd too early instead of too late. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4014033/android-the-gc-doesnt-respect-softreferences for details. On Apr 27, 11:24 am, dnkoutso <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey everyone, > > I got an OOM. I know it has been covered alot by previous questions but mine > has to do with the internals of Android. > > As I am loading images at random points I get this dreaded OOM exception. > > I do have my images in an HashMap>. From the SoftReferences definition I > would expect the Drawables to be GC'ed if memory is not enough. > > In contrast, from my previous research I see that the bitmap in the drawable > is allocated in a different heap (the native heap) than my applications > heap. That explains why on DDMS despite the fact I see 6MB of memory I am > using, my app still crashes. > > It also seems that SoftReferences are "perfect" for caches and are > recommended by Android engineers to use. > > My question is, since my application heap never reaches the MAX point, this > should mean my SoftReferences are never GC'ed. > > How can I resolve this problem? Is there really any gains from using > SoftReferences then? Am I not understanding something correctly? > > Thanks! -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
