Anki doesn't show any icons, you press 'r' to replay the sounds. In order for AnkiDroid to know to place an icon, it needs to keep the [sound:] tag intact, which this change will do. The confusing part is that there is a deck option for "Replay Question", which replays the sound in the question (and my guess is turning it on puts the icon back in). I'm not sure how this change will impact that setting, or even if the setting works in the first place.

We would need to find a solution that works in harmony with that setting, and any changes we make to libanki to satisfy it need to be commented.