I perfectly understand it, I had to get used to it myself. I think the issue is that Android's notification area is usually used for just that, notifications that require your attention. Nothing permanent.
The problem is that this is, as far as we know, the only reliable way to make sure that Android won't kill our app if the system is running out of resources. That's how other apps who need to keep running in the background do it as well.
I think there are two possible solutions:
- Don't run as a foreground service - just run like any other app and hope the system leaves us alive
- Use a transparent icon. It will still take up place in the notification bar, resulting in a strange gap, but it's still less annoying
These options are however both not good enough to be active by default, but we can add an option to hide the icon.
My suggestions is to implement both options, and put respective check boxes under Advanced preferences. Then we can have a Hide notification icon button right on the main screen, that leads to a new screen which explains the situation briefly and offers both solutions. If the users picks one, the preferences are changed respectively.
I fear this is the best we can do for now, but we should definitely address this quickly.