Image size and phone memory issues

Phone memory can be limited and for this reason CellPix takes the approach of only decoding the image when it is to be displayed. This approach is also adopted with imges downloaded from a server. After download the original image file is kept in memory and only decoded when needed for display. When a new image is displayed, the memory used for decoding of the previous image is reclaimed.

It is therefore better in most phones to have as many images as possible in the JAR instead of the server. The server option should be used when the JAR size becomes too big for the phone capabilities or for transfer over the air. Although the JAR file uses ZIP compression there is very little extra compression gained on GIF, PNG or JPEG files which are already compressed. However some other files such as the BMP format can be reduced in size substantially in the JAR creation process. Also note that PNG files with not more than 256 colors are smaller than GIF, whereas PNG files with more than 256 colors can be substantially bigger.

To find out how much memory is available to CellPix and how much is being used press the star '*' key when viewing any picture. The CellPix player monitors free memory and should Http downloads of images cause this to become too small then the earliest images downloaded will be removed from memory to allow room for more Http downloads.