Android :: Allocating Bitmaps And Out Of Memory Error

I'm running into OutOfMemoryErrors when allocating bitmaps. This is not something I can reproduce with emulators, and has been reported by a few beta testers with the HTC Incredible. I'm not sure I can solve this directly, and my best hope is to follow best practices for bitmaps and memory thereof. But looking for those best practices based on groups archives left me with more questions than answers. If anyone has a chapter about this in their book, I will buy the book. Here are the things I've mulled over so far:

1. I have a bitmap for a drawing buffer. It is about 3-4 megabytes on some devices. This is the biggest bitmap I have, and without it, I wouldn't be able to much of anything useful in my app. I am assuming that it would not be useful to use inPurgeable if this is a bitmap that is drawn into. Is this true?

2. Next biggest in the hierarchy are some bitmaps that are about 22K bytes and 256K unpacked. Since I believe about 25 of these might be used at one time, I have a cache with a size of 25. I am careful to use BitmapFactory.Options.InPurgeable, so I believe that could make them take only 22K each, but I don't see that as guaranteed. Maybe they are taking 256K each, which would put me in the danger zone. As they are cycled out of the cache, I call bitmap.recycle(). I think this a good practice. Is it?

3. Next are some resources with icon size 32x32 pixels. There are about 50 that could be used or reused. If I use code like this:

Drawable s = mCtx.getResources().getDrawable(R.drawable.symbol_icon);
Where s is a local variable to rendering. Suppose I call this 37 times. Am I to assume that Android will do something smart like create only one bitmap for this resource even if it is used 37 times? Or am I to assume that Android will do something stupid like create 37 bitmaps and keep references in an obscure location that will prevent garbage collection? Do I need to get more access to these bitmaps and do something smart myself?

4. Finally are some other icons used for menus and ImageButtons. Most are declared in layout files - so I don't touch the bitmaps directly.

I'd like to make my memory usage more efficient, but don't want to spend time on things that will amount to shuffling chairs on the Titanic. And how do I best measure this usage? Interestingly enough, I've tried using the Allocation Tracker and it says I haven't allocated a single bitmap. In light of the above, I don't think that's right.