Android : Android: Working with bitmaps without OutOfMemoryError

first the import lines of code:

Bitmap bitmap = BitmapFactory.decodeResource(context.getResources(), getDrawableForLvl(drawable));
int []pixels = new int[bitmap.getWidth()*bitmap.getHeight()];
bitmap.getPixels(pixels, 0, bitmap.getWidth(), 0, 0, bitmap.getWidth(), bitmap.getHeight());
//..
pixels = null; // please gc remove this huge data
System.gc();

So I'm working on an Android app (game) with multiple levels. Every level is an image that I load as bitmap on level start. Then I have to analyse every pixel (line 3). For that I create an array (line 2). The images are 1280x800, so the array has a size over one million ints. No problems here and since it's a local variable it should be destroyed on method return. But it's java, so it's not -.- Depending on the device the garbage collector is running fast enough in time or not. So when a user starts and closes levels very fast it produces a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError in line 2. I guess because the old array(s) wasn't/weren't removed yet and now I have multiple ones filling the memory.

I could make the array a static member. So it's created once and is always available. Then it's not possible to have multiple instances of it. But I think that's a bad coding style, because it's also available (4 MB) when not needed.

I don't need all pixels at the same time. I'm splitting the images in more than a hundred rectangles, so I could use a way smaller array and fill it one after another with pixels. But I have problems to understand the methods parameters can someone help me here? There is also a method to get just one pixel at position x,y, but I guess a million function calls is pretty slow.

Has someone a better idea? There is no way to force an object out of memory in java, is there?