Question

My android application size is only 5MB on the device, but when i run the application it uses a lot of RAM like around 12-18 MB (and more on ics devices). I am trying to find an explanation for this, on why my application is using a lot of RAM, i also use a push service from parse. My application is image intensive, might be a possible reason. How can i reduce the RAM consumption of my application.

Answer 1

The reason is most likely that your app is image intensive. By and large, images take up considerably more memory in RAM than on the disk. To see how much memory an image will take use the following formulae:

For ARGB images: memory(in bytes) = width * height * 4

This is because an ARGB image has 4 channels per pixel.

For RGB images: memory(in bytes) = width * height * 3

This is because and RGB image has 3 channels per pixel.

So to use less memory, try reducing the image dimensions, or removing the alpha channel from images that don’t require it.