India, Nov. 5 -- If you've ever stared at your phone in frustration, full signal bars showing on top, yet your videos buffer endlessly, you're not imagining things. It turns out, those shiny signal bars might be lying to you.

According to a new report by Nick vs Networking, Google has quietly added a feature in Android's Carrier Config Manager that lets telecom carriers "inflate" network signal bars. This means your phone could show one extra bar of strength, even when the actual connection is weak. The feature, marked as KEY_INFLATE_SIGNAL_STRENGTH_BOOL in Android's source code, isn't documented officially but can be found in Google's Git repository.

The kicker? Carriers can turn this on remotely through an OTA (over-the-air) update, p...