Started services are launched by other application components (such as an activity or even a broadcast receiver) and potentially run indefinitely in the background until the service is stopped, or is destroyed by the Android runtime system in order to free up resources. A service will continue to run if the application that started it is no longer in the foreground, and even in the event that the component that originally started the service is destroyed.
By default, a service will run within the same main thread as the application process from which it was launched (referred to as a local service). It is important, therefore, that any CPU intensive tasks be performed in a new thread within the service. Instructing a service to run within a separate process (and therefore known as a remote service) requires a configuration change within the manifest file.
Unless a service is specifically configured to be private (once again via a setting in the manifest...
