Android: how to increase heap size at runtime?

Question

I have an image cache in my application which is implemented using SoftReferences. Dalvik starts applications with relatively small heap, and then increases it in case of de

Answer 1

If the cache is ususally small as you say, you can decide a valid footprint of your app by yourself and maintain your own cache without SoftReferences.

For example by a simple total byte counter: Just add or move any element used to the top of a list, add its size to the counter if it is new. Delete from the bottom if the total bytes exceed your rule-of-thumb limit, thereby decreasing your counter. Maybe the LinkedHashMap class is useful for that: It can be used as a cache like a HashMap, but it has an order too like a list.