Question

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/service-element.html#proc

What are the differences?

If the name assigned to this attribute begins with a colon (‘:’), a new process, private to the application, is created when it’s needed and the service runs in that process. If the process name begins with a lowercase character, the service will run in a global process of that name, provided that it has permission to do so. This allows components in different applications to share a process, reducing resource usage.

I’ve checked and I can bind to Service no matter it is private or global, no matter if I do it within the same app or second one. (different UIDs)

Answer 1

I’m not sure what you mean by private process, but normally the service runs in the default process of you application or a dedicated one (set by android:process for the service component in your manifest). Clients that have a different user Id can bind to or start your service if the service has explicitly set android:exported=true or if the service component has intent filters and not set exported to false.

http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/service-element.html#exported

Permissions set on the service tag can further restrict who can start and bind to your service.