Efficient ListView in android

Question

What is the best way of constructing a ListView that uses the least memory possible? This is important, because I met a few implementations and most of them is lagging when I scroll the ListView on low-end devices, but I saw a few apps, where the scroll is very smooth, even on low-end devices. How can it be done? What is the most efficient way from a memory usage point of view to construct such a ListView?

Answer 1

• recycle your views in getView()
• use ViewHolder pattern
• use lazy loading if you have a lot of data to fill the list with
• use Cursor as underlying data instead of object list built from cursor if your data comes from database, you save memory by not creating additional objects.
• see http://www.google.com/events/io/2010/sessions/world-of-listview-android.html
• see http://android.amberfog.com/?p=296