Android P will come with a new setting that will allow telecom operators to customize the LTE signal bar’s appearance on the customer’s phones. Which means we will see full signal bars on our phones irrespective of the actual signal strength we are receiving.
The signal bars represent the signal strength and just by looking at the signal bars, we can tell whether the cellular reception is good or poor. When we will get Google’s Android P, we will not be able to tell whether the phone is getting a good signal or not. The XDA Developers have discovered this feature in the recent Android Source Code Commit.
There are many factors that impact the cellular reception including the build of the phone, the location and the number of bands adopted by the service provider. Android system breaks up the signal strength value in dBm units and represents it accurately in the form of signal bars. But with Android P, it is going to be a little bit different.
LTE Signal Bars in Android P
As reported by XDA Developers, Android P’s new setting will allow the service providers to set custom signal strength for the signal bars that appear on the phone. The reason behind this new setting is not clear right now also there hasn’t been any official statement from any authorized source, but if it turns out to be true, the telecom operators will be able to trick the customers in thinking that they are offering better signal strength than others.
Talking about the Android P, several AOSP source commits have revealed that Google has already started working on the next version of Android and it is expected to debut in the form of Developer Preview in April 2018. Recently, another XDA developer has found the name of Android P in an AOSP commit.