OutOfMemoryError: bitmap size exceeds VM budget

Sorry it seems like a repeated question, BUT I think I don't qualify to any of the recommendations already posted.

I've a Gallery of maximum 20 images on my application. After playing a while flinging back and forth I'm getting OutOfMemoryError.

The strange thing is that I don't hold any static references, and I've searched for possible memory leaks I can assure that I've not found one so far.

Anyway, 20 images (PNG of 100KB on average) doesn't be like that much. And I've implemented a view cache, SoftReference holders for the bitmaps, etc.

Is it 20 PNG images of 100KB on average enough to kill my app?? seriously? how can I get rid of this? I've followed this great post also

http://blog.jteam.nl/2009/09/17/exploring-the-world-of-android-part-2/

Any more ideas?

This is the ImageCache:

public class AsyncImageLoader {

    private final String TAG = getClass().getSimpleName();
    private Context mContext;
    private HashMap<String, SoftReference<Bitmap>> mImageCache;

    public AsyncImageLoader(Context context) {
        mContext = context;
            mImageCache = new HashMap<String, SoftReference<Bitmap>>();
    }

    public Bitmap loadImage(final String identifier, final String imagePath, final ImageCallback imageCallback) {

        if (mImageCache.containsKey(imagePath)) {
            SoftReference<Bitmap> softReference = mImageCache.get(imagePath);
            Bitmap bitmap = softReference.get();
            if (bitmap != null) {
                Log.i(TAG, "Retrieving image from cache: " + imagePath);
                return bitmap;
            }
        }

        final Handler handler = new Handler() {
            @Override
            public void handleMessage(Message message) {
                imageCallback.imageLoaded((Bitmap) message.obj, imagePath, identifier);
            }
        };

        new Thread() {

            @Override
            public void run() {
                Bitmap bitmap = loadImageFromPath(imagePath);
                mImageCache.put(imagePath, new SoftReference<Bitmap>(bitmap));
                Message message = handler.obtainMessage(0, bitmap);
                handler.sendMessage(message);
            }

        }.start();

        return null;
    }

    public Bitmap loadImageFromPath(String path) {

        if(!GeneralUtilities.isEmpty(path)) {
            Log.i(TAG, "Loading image: " + path);
            InputStream imageInputStream = null;

            try {               
                final AssetManager assetManager = mContext.getResources().getAssets(); 
                imageInputStream = assetManager.open(path);

                Bitmap bitmap = GeneralUtilities.decodeFile(imageInputStream);

                imageInputStream.close();

                return bitmap;
            } catch (final IOException e) {
                Log.e(TAG, e.getMessage());
            }        
        }

        return null;
    }

    public interface ImageCallback {
        public void imageLoaded(Bitmap imageBitmap, String imagePath, String identifier);
    }
}

and the method GeneralUtilities.decodeFile is:

public static Bitmap decodeFile(InputStream is){
        //Decode image size
        BitmapFactory.Options o = new BitmapFactory.Options();
        o.inJustDecodeBounds = true;
        BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is, null, o);

        //The new size we want to scale to
        final int REQUIRED_SIZE=140;

        //Find the correct scale value. It should be the power of 2.
        int width_tmp = o.outWidth, height_tmp = o.outHeight;
        int scale = 1;

        while(true) {
            if(width_tmp / 2 < REQUIRED_SIZE || height_tmp / 2 < REQUIRED_SIZE)
                break;
            width_tmp /= 2;
            height_tmp /= 2;

            scale *= 2;
        }

        //Decode with inSampleSize
        BitmapFactory.Options o2 = new BitmapFactory.Options();
        o2.inSampleSize = scale;
        return BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is, null, o2);  
      }

And in the getView of the ArrayAdapter I've something like this:

final ImageView itemImage = cache.getHistoryImage();        
        //final ImageView itemFrame = cache.getFrame();

        String filename = item.getFilename().trim();

        itemImage.setTag("front_" + filename);

        Bitmap cachedImage = mAsyncImageLoader.loadImage("front_" + filename, filename, new ImageCallback() {

            public void imageLoaded(Bitmap imageBitmap, String imagePath, String identifier) {

                ImageView imageViewByTag = (ImageView) mGallery.findViewWithTag(identifier);
                if (imageViewByTag != null) {
                    imageViewByTag.setImageBitmap(imageBitmap);
                }
            }
        });

        itemImage.setImageBitmap(cachedImage);

There seems to be a bug in the Android framework, although Google seems to deny it.

Did you read through issue 8488?

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=8488

I am not sure if this applies to your code - but you might try the recommendations before setting/updating the image on the ImageView.

Basically, it boils down to calling Bitmap.recycle(), nulling references (probably irrellevant in your case) and explicitly calling calling System.gc().

The garbage collector seems to run asynchronously and a new might fail even though memory could be freed.