I am guessing there is an obvious answer here... I am left confused with this one:
Why do I get 17.8 MiB heap memory allocated when all I have done is:
If I take out the android:background="@drawable/background4"
line, the allocated memory goes down to 11.9 MiB.
I also ran a MAT report on it, but I am not sure what conclusion to draw from it:
Thanks in advance,
And added a 56 KiB background image.
No, you added a 56 KiB file that you are using as a background image.
The actual heap space consumed by a bitmap is three bytes per pixel. With a ~6MB bitmap (per your MAT screen), you are running your app on a fairly high resolution device or emulator (1080p should result in ~8MB, IIRC).