When to use out arguments rather then a return value

Question

While going through some public API's (for instance android.view.View.getLocationOnScreen), I noticed that it's quite common to use an approach of void function with out parameters rather then simply returning a value.

I see the benefits of this approach when there are multiple return values, and it doesn't make sense to create a dedicated complex type to hold them. It is also useful in OOP when a function returns some interface and the user is allowed to choose the implementation most suitable for his case.
In many of the examples I have seen (the one above for instance), this was not the case.

Other then such two specific cases, I see only drawbacks with such approach:

It tends to be confusing for rookie developers / users.

Every caller must allocate the out parameters memory on its own, which leads to code duplication and possible slippery bugs.

It requires the function to perform extra checking for uninitialized out parameters and decide a default behavior when it's not initialized (internal initializing / throwing exception / returning empty or default value).

So, can you think of any benefits, or a general criteria for cases that should return out values?