Two things will affect your reception - antenna and spectrum. Smart phone vs. dumb phone doesn't matter.
Three companies consistently build phones with excellent antennas - Apple, Blackberry and Motorola.
Lower-end spectrum is better at penetrating obstacles, but doesn't travel as far. Higher-end spectrum travels further, but has problems penetrating obstacles.
The best solution for you will depend on who your carrier is and what phone you're using now.
Thanks for the response SERO. Took your advise and contacted an ATT store. The small ATT store (Spring) did not have much info. Called ATT's local telephone number, and the woman was extremely nice. She contacted a larger ATT owned store in a city about 120 miles from us, and she notified that store to provide us with a mini-cell tower which ATT would provide us free of charge. When we got to that large ATT store, we found that the mini-cell tower would not work for us because we have no broadband (cable or land line) that the mini could connect to.
The man at the larger store questioned us about our reception, and when he found that we had one window in the house that we could get three or four bars consistently (the window faces the cell tower and there is an opening about 150 feet long which has no trees), he suggested using a wireless home phone base made by ATT that connects by conventional telephone wire to a base unit of a cordless telephone. The wireless home phone base was assigned a new telephone number (the new number costs us 9.99 a month). ATT provided the wireless home phone base and a cordless telephone set having three hand sets free because of the trouble that we were having.
The system works like a dream. We are happy campers now. The cordless sets work anywhere in the house and for about 100 feet outside the house. We are pleased with the way that ATT handled the situation. Don't know what we would have done if we did not have that one spot in our house that did pick up a fair cell phone signal however.
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