What Is a Memory Leak?

Let’s start from the beginning.

A memory leak happens when an object that is no longer used is still referenced in-memory by another object. It is particularly troublesome in the Android world since Android devices have a very limited amount of memory, sometimes as little as 16 MB. As much as you may think this is enough to run an application, believe me, you can run over this limit rather quickly.

Eating up the available memory is the most direct result, but there’s another interesting side effect of running low on memory: the Garbage Collector (GC) will start triggering more frequently. When the GC triggers, the world stops. An app needs to render a frame every 16 milliseconds, and with the Garbage Collector running, this framerate can be compromised.

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