Originally Posted By: dougwalkabout

I respectfully disagree, and I base this on my hands-on experience.

Some digital phones will pull in a signal more strongly than others, and will punch out calls in fringe areas where other phones will not.

A couple of years ago, I upgraded to a "smart" phone. I discovered that it would not pick up a signal on major highways where I knew for a fact there was service. I went back to my little Nokia candy bar phone, bought a couple of spares on sale, and haven't looked back.

I have friends who were amazed that my cheap, boring, $40 Nokia could pick up 2 bars when they had nothing on their $400+ phones. So it's not just me.

My entirely unscientific testing indicates an inverse rule: the more things a cell phone tries to do, the less likely it is to make phone calls when you need to. YMMV.


How long ago was this?

While Canada might be different, in the U.S. they passed a law that in 2005 all newly activated cell phones had to be GPS enabled. This, combined with a previous law that restricted headsets to .06 watts, effectively made it impossible to activate an older handset phone with greater than .06 watts of power.

Prior to 2005 it was possible to use older phones from before the .06 watt requirement (such as Motorola Star-Tacs and older Nokia Candy Bars). After 2005 the law prevented such phones from being activated.

While I'm not sure about Canada, in the U.S., all new handset phones are essentially equal now as long as they are operating at the maximum legal power.

With that in mind, there is an issue with some smart phones where the user will block the antenna if they hold the phone a certain way (thereby degrading the signal).