Your carrier could be faking your phone’s signal bars, with Google’s help

Whenever I compare telecom carriers, the two most important factors I consider, aside from price, are network speed and coverage. 5G has become standard nowadays, which improves both calling and data with faster network speeds.

However, even if your phone supports 5G and your carrier claims you’re getting faster speeds, that might not always be the case. It has recently been discovered that Google and two network carriers may be lying to you about your phone’s signal strength.

This discovery was revealed in a recent report by Nick vs Networking, which uncovered an interesting detail in Android’s Carrier Config Manager. This is a system service that carriers use to tell Android phones how to operate on their network. In the config’s source code, Nick found a notable flag called “KEY_INFLATE_SIGNAL_STRENGTH_BOOL.”

According to the flag’s description in Android’s source code, it instructs your phone to display one more signal bar than you actually have. This means that even if you’re experiencing slow network speeds, your phone may try to deceive you into thinking your signal strength is stronger than it really is.

Although Android’s support materials for the Carrier Config Manager do not mention the flag, it has been added to the source code. The relevant commit in Android’s Git repository has it noted as “Add config to artificially inflate number of bars.”

While this flag in Android’s Carrier Config Manager is clearly a red flag, not every carrier is using it, and the two that do probably won’t surprise you.

Which carriers are potentially lying to you about your signal strength?

Two of the largest carriers in the US naturally

If you’re wondering which network carriers might be misleading Android users about their signal strength, it’s AT&T and Verizon, according to Nick vs Networking’s report, which found both to have the flag enabled on their networks.

So, if you’re an AT&T or Verizon customer and use an Android phone, it’s entirely possible that your phone’s signal strength might not be as strong as it’s cracked up to be if the carrier has decided to activate this flag on your phone.

It’s worth noting that this flag isn’t enabled by default, and the carrier must activate it through an OTA update (via Android Authority). The change may also affect phones beyond those locked to these networks, including unlocked phones using them, since the configuration settings for Android’s Carrier Config Manager are determined by the loaded SIM card, which then receives instructions from your network carrier on which settings to load and which updates to download. All of this also means that phone companies using Android on their devices have little control over this.

What remains unclear is which telecom carrier requested that Google add this flag to Android and why Google proceeded with it. To me, it seems the sole purpose of the flag is to mislead people about their phone’s actual signal strength. Although there is no definitive explanation for why this flag was added to Android’s Carrier Config Manager, it was presumably intended to reduce complaints about signal issues and to make people believe their coverage is better than it actually is.

It’s disappointing to see this flag in Android’s Carrier Config Manager, and I hope Google finds the sense to remove it. If telecom carriers want their customers to see more service bars, they should focus on providing better coverage rather than lying to them about it.

This isn’t the first time carriers have attempted to mislead customers about their signal strength. Back when 5G was first rolling out, AT&T faced backlash for putting fake 5G icons on select LG and Samsung phones through an OTA update that changed the LTE signal to “5G E,” even though the phones didn’t support 5G.