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Okay, sounds like you're assuming a scenario where you need to actually create the view to figure out the height, sure.

In other scenarios (contact list, list of artists and albums and songs) you know the height of an item from its type, and you can just return (one of a set of) constants like I said. That shouldn't be expensive at all.

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The height is calculated automatically for the rows that are visible and you can fix it to a certain amount.

So, as screigh said, you won't have the wormy effect on contact list, artists, songs, etc. because each row is always x pixels. The same happens if you have for example a series of thin and thick rows because they average out.

Another reason why using a set of constants is not common is that we have different screen sizes and different resolutions to deal with, so what looks like a good value for a resolution might not be the best for another.

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