Officially, the Enable flag is for whether or not the Service can be instantiated by the system. But what does that mean in practice? Say I set android:enabled="false”. Does that mean START_STICKY will no longer work? How about START_REDELIVER_INTENT?
It means the Service will not be created or run at all, regardless of what is returned from the onStartCommand() method, as it will never reach that point.
Just like for an Activity, Service instantiation is handled by the system, so when the documentation indicates that the system cannot instantiate a Service when enabled is false, it means that the Service just will not be run.