Question

Is it a good practice to catch OutOfMemoryError even you have tried some ways to reduce memory usage? Or should we just not catching the exception? Which one is better practice?

try {
    BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
    options.inSampleSize = 4;
    bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(file, options);
} catch (OutOfMemoryError e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Thanks

Answer 1

It’s good practice to catch it once and give decodeFile another chance. Catch it and call System.gc() and try decoding again. There is a high probability that it will work after calling System.gc().

try {
    BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
    options.inSampleSize = 4;
    bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(file, options);
 } catch (OutOfMemoryError e) {
    e.printStackTrace();

    System.gc();

    try {
        bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(file);
    } catch (OutOfMemoryError e2) {
      e2.printStackTrace();
      // handle gracefully.
    }
}