Carriers might hide signal strength in future updates of Android

It is speculated that telecom service providers might shut off your ability to check the signal strength in the future versions of Android. The good folks at XDA forums have noticed that a recent commit made in the Android Open Source Project halts the ability of users to check out their Signal Strenght in Sim Status options. There is no explanation as to why it has been done.

This change if implemented will give the carriers the ability to disable Signal Strength from appearing in SIM Status settings. Interestingly, the signal strength API will still be working for third-party applications and tools, so if users are curious enough they will have to rely on third-party tools for that.

According to the community at XDA, this change might have been implemented at the request of one or two carriers but we are not sure what motivated these carriers to ask for this change.

On the other hand, Google is taking steps and measures to tackle fragmentation on its platform. In the Android ecosystem, too many devices are still using previous versions of Android thereby making it difficult for developers to give a fluid and consistent experience across all Android Devices.