All Android UI elements are classes too

When our app is run and the setContentView method is called from onCreate, the layout is inflated from XML UI classes and loaded into memory as usable objects. They are stored in a part of the DVM memory called the heap.

Reintroducing references

However, where are all these UI objects/classes? We certainly can't see them in our code. And how on earth do we get our hands on them?

The DVM inside every Android device takes care of memory allocation to our apps. In addition, it stores different types of variables in different places.

Variables that we declare and initialize in methods are stored in the area of memory that is known as the stack. We can stick to our existing warehouse analogy when talking about the stack—almost. We already know how we can manipulate variables on the stack. So, let's talk about the heap and what is stored there.

Note

Important fact: All objects of classes are reference type variables and are just references to the actual objects...