Android 2.3 has lower VM budget than 2.1 and 2.2?

Question

It seems like Android 2.3 has much smaller VM budget than 2.1 amd 2.2. I am suprised that the newer OS is more restrictive, I would expect that due to the development of technology one should have bigger memory allocation for an application (VM budget).

Because of this I cannot hold in memory big bitmap images, which is important for a graphics image manipulation application I am doing now. But it works fine in 2.1 and 2.2.

If I scale down my image with inScale to accommodate 2.3 then I lose on quality of my output.

Do you have any advice how to handle this difference between 2.3 and the previous versions based on your own experience?

Answer 1

Android 2.3's VM budget is actually higher (32 MB.) The difference is that Android 2.3 now loads all bitmaps in 32 bits (ARGB8888) by default instead of 16 bits.

See http://www.curious-creature.org/2010/12/04/gingerbread-and-32-bits-windows/ and http://www.curious-creature.org/2010/12/08/bitmap-quality-banding-and-dithering/ for more information