title: Bitmap Image out of memory
body: <p>I know there is a lot of discussion about android bitmap images out of memory but I was wondering if someone could explain it to me..</p>
  
  <p>Currently in my app I have an activity which lists image thumbnail (low quality) and when I click an image it opens a new activity to view the image full screen. In my 2nd activity class I have:</p>
  
  <pre><code>BitmapFactory.Options options = new BitmapFactory.Options();
  options.inSampleSize = 1;
  bm = BitmapFactory.decodeFile(myImagePath, options);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I then put this into an ImageView to display it. This works and displays my image to its full quality. However if i click back and then click to see that image again (and repeat this 6 times) .. on the 6th time opening the image (activity2) I get an out of memory error saying Heap size=6919KB, Allocated=3125KB, Bitmap Size = 25848KB! </p>
  
  <p>How is bitmap size that big? I assumed it may be creating new instances all the time so I then decided to put a method in my 2nd activity for when the back key is pressed..and in this method I set my bitmap=null and also did System.gc() to clear the garbage collector BUT this did not fix the problem. I still get an out of memory error on the 6th time of clicking on the thumbnail to view the image in full resolution</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone explain why? Thanks</p>