It really limits what we can currently achieve too. We have the same problems with our English vocabulary apps. We require a lot of pictures, but are limited to about 100 vocabulary pictures at the moment (assets no more than 7MB) so we can't really sell our apps or use IAP and are limited to ads.
Our layouts are no bigger than our screen sizes. We make great efforts to only use the pictures that are needed for each level (the pictures are on an unused layout), which does help a bit, but all the pictures are decompressed into system RAM, at least on Android 2.x.
Strangely I get 100MB RAM use on Android 2.x (Galaxy S and mini) but only 25MB on my Sony Xperia S (4.1) - so either the Sony handles images better, Android 4.x does or CocoonJS works differently on 4.x. Perhaps the app usage info is not accurate on 4.x, but games do resume very quickly.
Can anyone confirm whether this layout by layout loading issue just with 2.x or applies to 4.x too? Our games are designed to run on 2.x so we haven't tried pushing 4.x to see how many vocabulary images we can use on 4.x. The 2.x market share is decreasing rapidly so I'm starting to worry less about supporting it.