Does make/model/age of phone affect signal reception ??
 

Just curious as to how much of a difference model/make/age of mobile makes to signal reception.
I have an 8 year old Nokia on Vodafone, wife has a 3 year old Samsung on Vodafone but I seem to get (barring full srength) a much better reception / signal strength wherever we are together.

Does it follow the newer the phone the better the signal reception? - has the technology in the phones improved for this in the last few years that they are very similar or are there "better" phones for picking up Vodafone signal than others - i.e. Nokia's are generally better than LG's etc. ??

I need to get a new phone and the area where we live the Vodafone signal isn't brilliant so need a phone that wont drop the signal as much.

Any advice / thoughts appreciated.

They've all got to meet certain standards for certification before they can be sold to the general public. You would therefore expect all phones to perform the same in the same location. There will however be subtle differences to each one. Some manufacturers are known to report a stronger signal in low signal areas to make their phones look better to the public. As it's just an indication of the strength there are no hard and fast rules that manufacturers have to follow. A signal strength meter showing two bars on one phone could well be the same as three bars on another.

Unless you can get the phone to report the actual signal strength in dBm that it thinks it's getting at the antenna as well as the signal to noise ratio (SNR) then it's all a bit meaningless.

Short answer: Yes :D

The signal on my C902 was terrible compared to the old w880i that it replaced (dopping calls, comming up no signal etc). Likewise the Samsung I have now is superior (I can actually get a 3G signal wooo! although that might be a network improvement).

My local pub is in a dead zone (handy for a quiet pint), but its a good guage of a phone's performance; My current phone can just about send a recieve texts - whilst most other can't even do that!