Chethan is a reporter at Android Police, focusing on the news coverage for the site. He has covered tech for over a decade for multiple publications, including Times Internet, Guiding Tech, Android Headlines, and several others.
His love for Android dates back to the Samsung/Google Nexus S, and his first Android phone was the HTC Desire HD in 2010.
Away from work, he's on the lookout for live cricket streams or NBA highlights. He also enjoys the occasional hour or two of console/mobile gaming whenever time permits.
Sign in to your Android Police account
While Android Auto supports a bevy of features, it also has its fair share of problems that most users have grown somewhat accustomed to. Among them is the missing cellular icon in the status bar, an issue that has persisted for several months. Without it, users have no way to tell what cellular coverage looks like on the go. Thankfully, Google appears to be gradually rolling out a fix for this particular glitch.
A couple of Reddit user reports mention getting back the missing cellular network icon in the status bar, next to the existing Wi-Fi indicator (via Android Authority). We're seeing several comments underneath both Reddit threads highlighting the icon's reappearance.
Since there's no fixed rollout for this bug-fixing update, it's hard to tell when your Android Auto head unit will start showing the cellular icon and its accompanying signal bars. The cellular icon hasn't disappeared for every user, with some claiming they've never lost it. But many users have seen it vanish from the status bar in recent months.
At least a couple of users are seeing the icon return in version 17.8.663874 of Android Auto, though the fix could also land with a server-side update. This makes it difficult to predict when some phones will see the update. That said, we recommend downloading the latest version of Android Auto to see whether the signal bars are back.
Now that the cellular icon is back, what about other features?
Long before the signal bars disappeared from Android Auto, Google removed the handy temperature reading from the status bar. A quick look at the comments under the Reddit post suggests many users want this icon back, too. However, given Android Auto's slow-paced feature rollouts and bug fixes, we won't be holding our breath.
While some elements tend to randomly disappear from Android Auto, others still haven't made it to the platform. The ability to choose between light and dark themes is one such feature.
Because some Android Auto apps default to the dark theme, using them during the day, especially when the sun hits your dashboard, can be difficult. The good news is that recent developments suggest Android Auto may be inching closer to implementing this visual addition, after what feels like an extremely long wait.
But it's not all bad news. We've recently seen the platform add support for receiving voice messages from your WhatsApp contacts. However, it doesn't work as intended yet because Android Auto still doesn't let you send voice messages back to one-on-one or group chats. Instead, users have to use the standard voice-to-text feature to draft and send their message while driving.
Things aren't that great with Google's first-party messaging app either, as Google Messages still doesn't let you play or send voice messages on Android Auto. For now, we can only hope Google fills some of these gaps in future updates.