The practice of showing the mobile network signal strength in form of five bars is in place for more than a decade now. The better signal you are receiving, the more bars you see in the phone. But lately in some Android smartphones, the mobile network signal strength is always shown to its full five bars no matter how poor reception you are getting. This is very confusing because even in case of very poor signal, you stay under the impression that you are getting great reception but you never know why the phone calls are being interrupted so often. One way to find out is to go into Android settings and check the value of mobile signal strength in terms of dBm and ASU. But even better is to have the network signal strength displayed in the notification bar with the help of the free Signal Notification app.
The Signal Notification app shows the network signal strength in the dBm (decibel milli-watts) in your Android device’s notification bar. The values could look confusing as they may be positive or negative, but as the value go towards zero the signal gets better. For example, value of -70 dBm is a pretty good signal, but a value of -50 dBm is even better. In my personal experience, I have never seen positive values in my Android phone.
You can toggle the notification from the Signal Notification app itself. There are two separate buttons, tapping on which you can toggle on or off the Android notification bar display of the signal value. You can also change the color of the notification text and the widget color that this app installs in your phone. This widget can also be used to display the numeric value of the signal strength on your home screen.
Verdict: The Signal Notification app can help you find the exact signal strength value in dBm units in the notification bar of your Android smartphone. It even has a widget that can display the value of network strength on the home screen.
You can get the Signal Notification app for Android from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.logicmonkey.signalnotifyfree.