The data upload/download indicators for both cell and Wi-Fi were very helpful and I was disappointed to see they are nowhere to be found on my Nexus 5.  I hope the Android team at least addresses why they chose to remove this feature.

This is a step backwards in my opinion along with the lack of color change on the mobile/wifi indicators to indicate accounts are synced. The option to turn these back on (or a variant of them) would be great.

I think both the arrows and the synced color changes have been relocated to the quick setting menu/tray. You have 2 arrows there and when not connected to Google's servers the wifi icon turns orange.
Correct me if I am wrong.

They have been moved to quick settings.  Still makes it a pain to see if data is being transmitted

Please inherit proven functionality!

This UI change is working as intended.

Please look at the design. The design is broken, to have to switch to quick settings to tell if my data is transmitting or not, or the mobile network got messed up, and I need to re-send. 

Please have UE/UX team re-visit the design again.. This was a great FEATURE which has now been removed.

The only reason I can see them doing this on purpose is android wants to transmit data without the end user knowing about, which is not a good thing. Being sneeeking does not gain trust for your users 

@comment #6. Please do not mark something as "working as intended" without answering the original question: can you explain WHY this was done? We all know that this is no bug: the code was explicitly taken out of the relevant sources. The question is WHY.

A recent review on a popular website also mentions this feature as lacking:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/android-4-4-kitkat-thoroughly-reviewed/

So clearly, people want this feature and you are not making it easy by just sliding it under the table.

Over to you Google.

Arrogant form over function strikes again.

Ridiculously stupid that they removed such a functional feature. How do things like these get approved?

bring it back or justify why you took it out, teach your client support to never flag a client complaint as a working as intended feature without justification.
thank God we have custom ROMs

Maybe removed for the tiny battery saving? Is a shame because this kind of "dumbing down" of the UI is unnecessary - a subtle indication won't be noticed at first, but a new user can learn to understand what it means, eg. by spotting that pages don't load when the arrows don't appear. 

The colour to indicate that it's connected to Google services isn't so intuitive though. I had to Google that. 

http://goo.gl/OF662U : "Lastly, you might have noticed the up/down network activity arrows are gone from the signal indicator. They've been booted to Quick Settings as well because it actually takes a noticeable amount of CPU and GPU time to render those flashing arrows as data packets transit the radios. Moving them saves resources and makes the main home interface cleaner." 

I, too have seen the "official" word from Google. I still think its a bit of a cop-out. Why has it taken until now, after every previous version of Android had those data indicators, for them to suddenly decide it is a "performance issue". It makes even less sense considering that hardware is much faster and more battery efficient today than when those earlier versions of Android were still new.

I believe that the ACTUAL reason is simply due to a "cleaner look". I have actually made a patch to put the data indicators back onto the framework based on the 4.3 sources- the algorithm is the same. There are a couple of things I noticed when I tried to do this:

1. It is _really_ difficult to select a correct shade of grey that will look consistent with everything else and still have them appear obvious when the reception was low on a black status bar background. If you take a look at the battery charging icon, you can see that there is a shade of grey used to show the "lightning". Unfortunately this shade is too light in color. If you use this color on the indicators, and open an app which shows the black status bars, since the white shaded parts of the icons are partially transparent, it darkens the reception icons and the data indicator icons will not show very well. However, if you are on the transparent status bar, the data indicators now look too dark and again, not really consistent with the rest of the theme.

2. The actual _size_ of the arrows is also very difficult to be consistent for both the wifi and reception icons. If the arrow sizes are the same, either the arrows will be too small for the wifi icon, or too big for the reception indicator. But you do not really want the arrow sizes to be different, since that also looks strange.

In the end, compromises would have to be made either way unless they change the way the data indicators are shown all together (like Samsung who draws an entirely new icon to indicate data connection- it is a nice solution but the icons are terribly ugly).

Interesting article regarding this topic:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/11/18/a-google-engineer-explains-why-kitkat-has-white-status-bar-icons-and-only-shows-connectivity-in-quick-settings/

Tl;dr: The little arrows needed much rendering power...

Btw. If you pull down the notification bar with two fingers (or swap to the settings bar) you still see these indicators!

 Issue 62699  has been merged into this issue.

Bad decision definitely.
Going walking back instead of improve the user friendly! 
Bad bad bad!

At least give the option of turning it back on... every phone I've had since my blackberry in 05 has had the same arrows so I don't want to hear the performance bs. The arrows and the color change were incredibly useful day to day even. Now I find myself looking constantly and finding nothing.

I "love" it how easily the developers simply close an issue that may actually turn and bite them in their proverbial rear ends.

To developers such as jsharkey@android.com: before posting a myopic response in the lines of "functioning as intended", it would be to Google's best interest to investigate why and what for people are actually complaining.

I did read the "official" explanantion on color consistency. Do I believe it? I mostly do. Am I convinced? Not at all.

Even Microsoft, in their own wisdom, have a warning triangle on the signal strength indicator on the task bar.

This is not a bug. It is a DESIGN FLAW. Internet/IP connectivity issues should be PUSHED to the user, not wait hidden until they are PULLED by the user with two finger moves. Dear developers, do you ask yourselves how much time I and other KitKat users waste pondering what's going on with my Internet connection until I check the indicators' color in the menu?

You want to take away the colors from the notification bar? That's fine. But do allow a notification icon on or by the signal strength bars to indicate of problems. 

If this is not resolved, I will revert to 4.3. How about that for being a "working as intended" issue? For future reference, please do not insult my intelligence.

My Nexus 4 DOES NOT SHOW UP OR DOWN ARROW INDICATORS EVEN IN THE PULL DOWN NOTIFICATION AREA?
Whatever the justification (excuse) this was obviously a poor decision on somebody's behalf. Please find the engineer responsible and send him to apple to work. (Or Walmart, where less is more) That seems to be his/her philosophy.
It was a mistake. Every single person I queried at school and work agreed that is a poor choice. A step backward. It is not part of an upgrade, it is in fact clearly a downgrade. Thanks brain dead!

Robert Callahan
Palm Bay, FL USA

	Screenshot_2013-12-03-18-38-58.png 150 KB   View   Download

Someone from the Android team said (in an article linked above) that the arrows were moved because redrawing them caused a layout update, which used a lot of resources. It seems to me that moving the arrows of the status bar was just a lazy shortcut to avoid the problem. A more worthy fix would be to enable status bar updates of this nature without triggering a layout update. 

#21 Your screenshot is showing a down arrow... It is next to the WiFi icon rather than in it as used to be the case in the status bar.

I agree with the general consensus though; it is a backward step, even though having the WiFi die completely in response to any sort of battery saving background scheduling is causing me more pain right now.... And don't get me started on the changes to the SMS database access...

If I could downgrade my Nexus 5 to 4.3 I would :'( 

This is the reason why I won't update to KitKat. I'm hoping someone over at xda eventually has a work around for it.

Those upload down load arrows are important.
To me down load equals costing me money on my plan.
Up load when I don't expect it prompts me to question privacy and why is this app buisy on the network.
Both are useful when an app stalls, is it network or app?.
I have a quad core N5, dont try to tell me I can't afford some CPU cycles to run a small icon. 
More like Google, movie/music/etc is network intensive and it shows. The choice is mine anyway.
Enable the option please. 
The subtle pressure being applied to push you into the Google ecosystem is disturbing. 

What a bad change and step back. It looks like to me a lazy change as they didn't want to find out an alternative to supposedly save the resources that may be consuming. The project managers may be actually trying to save their resources (people's time to investigate this better) if this has ever been an issue.
As the previous reply most devices have more than enough resources to have those icons enabled and overall the choice should be with the user. Why not perhaps make it possible to enable/disable this function or part of the Power Saving settings. No, they have chosen simply remove it.
I'm not looking forward to upgrade my device to KitKat until this is resolved despite all the other improvements.

I really missed having my blinkenlights! I understand why they were removed, yet often find myself sitting there wondering if anything is happening at all - for this purpose (calming neurotic geeks) I created an app that adds them back: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.geoffreybuttercrumbs.blinkenlights

If not the arrows, please put back at least the color change!

What a shame the Adroid team doesn't seems to care about this thread and respond with an appropriate answer instead of just "It's working as intended". I still firmly beleive the team have been lazy to go and find a better solution and at least give users the option to enable it or not as they wish.

google becomes more and more like apple..
which is absurd, we run away from apple to google :(

Just ringing in another vote for reinstating the status bar data activity indicators. Moving them off the status bar is a huge step down. We want to see when our data connections are active.

I haven't read a single person who disagrees, and even if the bs about battery/cpu was true (which I seriously doubt), I would be willing to give up at least an hour of battery time for these indicators. They are that important, that useful.

At a minimum the choice to turn it On/Off to the user. If I'm willing to sacrifice a little of my battery (which I don't think is that much) it's my choice.

Google - (jshar...@android.com), manifest yourself, don't just hide from responsibility saying everything works as intended.

I guess they are not going to listen on this thread anymore. Would someone open a new bug report to them, perhaps if each one of us do this they will give a bit more attention. The Android team might not even be getting these updates here.
I suggest do that and add the issue number to this main thread for record.

Just did my report on  Issue 66423 
http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=66423&thanks=66423&ts=1393441896

To do in the correct way Google would expect, open it as a Feature Request instead.

 Issue 66423  has been merged into this issue.

It was a very helpful feature but now dropped and frankly speaking i didn't notice any change in battery performance. There should be an option to enable/disable those indicators!

The Android team still refuses to comment. Typical behavior from those big companies that we all hate. Still hoping it's an isolated behavior from a few individuals in the team.

Everyone should open their individual Feature Requests as suggested to give them wide heads up about this issue.

If they have concern about having gpu or cpu time, soon or later u will lose the signal strength from status bars as they are fluctuating... Grrr... Improvements should not sacrifice user friendlyness. How did this feature pass UAT?

It's called laziness !

Needs to come back! ASAP!