How much memory should a typical android application use?

Question

I have developed a file parsing application on the android platform. How do I check how much memory my application is actually using up ? I tried the adb shell cat /proc/meminfo command but this does not give me how much memory my application is using. it just gives general info about the overall memory. And how much memory should an application typically use up ? what is usual or unusual ? Any help is appreciated. Thanks !

Answer 1

Android apps are constrained to a certain amount of memory. As it's quite (insanely?) low, I think you shouldn't feel guilty about using all of it!

The limit is 16 MB on very old devices, 24 MB or 32 MB on newer ones. There doesn't seem to be much info on the size for different devices, and nobody seems to know why the limit is so small when modern phones have 1-2 GB of RAM.

http://blog.javia.org/how-to-work-around-androids-24-mb-memory-limit/

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/android-platform/7zKQlrDcypQ

Aha, I found some concrete numbers on the limit:

http://dubroy.com/memory_management_for_android_apps.pdf

G1: 16MB

Droid: 24MB

Nexus One: 32MB

Xoom: 48MB