With the native bitmap stuff, they are not writing any native code. They are referring to using this flag: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/grap

With the native bitmap stuff, they are not writing any native code. They are referring to using this flag: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/BitmapFactory.Options.html#inPurgeable http://developer.android.com/reference/android/graphics/Bitm... When creating bitmaps. It seems to act as a hint to the BitmapFactory to allocate the bitmap in a different memory space to where it would create a stock standard java object. There seems to be some pros and cons to this approach - namely the memory allocated to the bitmap could be disposed at any time, meaning the bitmap would have to be reloaded from disk, or wherever it came from. I will try out the flag in my own app, and see what impact it has.