It’s also available in /e/OS - Settings | System | Status bar | Network traffic monitor
And /e/ won’t be doing anything to allow he display of more icons on the status bar: they would prefer to see fewer (or even zero). And it would mean adding new code, and doing more testing, and fixing more bugs (because you can’t have software without bugs ), and /e/ don’t have enough developers at the moment to implement, test and fix the core features, never mind adding new “bells and whistles”.
I remember that network traffic feature being dependent on device and the location of the notch.
On my Essential PH-1 the feature briefly showed up in Settings (Pie) after a new installation and then disappeared.
I briefly mentioned it here…
…but I can’t for the life of me find the info I read about that. Not even sure that’s still the case now.
If I remember correctly, even though the monitor could be positioned on the statusbar, on the lockscreen it could not. Devices with middle notch would have the monitor obscured as it was displaying behind the notch. On such middle notch devices the feature was removed.
More searching and I found that it still seems to be the case. Notch = no network traffic monitor.
The Poco F1 and Fairphone 4 have notches. The Xperia Z5 and Fairphone 3 do not so they get the network traffic monitor.
I see. That makes sense since there’s pretty much no space left on the sides of the notch, let alone for displaying the network speed.
I actually proposed the dual status bar for this reason, so that the connection speed could be displayed under the clock or battery icon. Another option would be keeping the single status bar and showing the network speed when pulling down the notifications panel (next to the battery, WiFi icon and so on).
But I also understand, as @petefoth mentioned, that this would add complexity and resources are limited. In my case, with an unreliable Internet connection, it’s not just a matter of “bells and whistles”, but rather a way of quickly detecting whether the connection is working or not.
As a rooted user I still get the network traffic via things like GravityBox or the like.
On F-Droid there is an old (from 2019) app called DataStats from the author of CPU Stats. A later/last/final build from early 2021 is at the GitHub. Didn’t know that 'til today. Had been using the old build on an Oreo ROM.
Anyway, it’s an overlay so might not be ideal. There would be those times when certain buttons weren’t working (like INSTALL or a confirmation dialog) due to the overlay. Easy to forget that sometimes. Can be temporarily paused or stopped via notification.
I have never seen a dual statusbar on anything other than MIUI. Quite the heavily modified environment and OS with features and PITAs not available in others.