BIRDIE I live in a rural area and don't use my phone much while home. Reception is negligible even with assist.

I live in a fairly urban area with solid LTE coverage. But my home and around 20 others are in a bit of a dip which is an LTE hole. I have a Samsung LTE extender that makes regular phone calls work.

And so do a bunch of my neighbors! Carriers know exactly where each LTE extender is, so my carrier must know they have a coverage hole in my neighborhood. But I guess it's fine for them because we are all paying for the cellular infrastructure and also for the backhaul.

If you have an extender and still have trouble, maybe see if a nearby ham radio operator could help it work a bit better.

      Blastoidea

      Yes, I have read about them removing the bootloader and they did it to my Note8. When in dev mode, I wasn not even given the option of OEM, not even greyed out, but it was gone altogether. So, I plan to get my phone direct from Google.

      Thanks for the info.

        de0u

        I had one when I worked high up on a mountain back when it was 3G at best. Yeah, the GPS is precise. I didn't like it then and wouldn't like it now, but sometimes got to do what got to do.

        Am thinking about the phone long and hard before I shell the $. Will a newer model phone bring in the 4G signal better than my 2017 old Note 8? I would think it would. I've read that people say it is clearer.

        Now I scoping out the 7. It is $100.00 difference.

          BIRDIE

          Wherever you get the phone make sure it has a good return policy, preferably no questions asked and where you don't have to pay return shipping.

          I don't have actual links to this but I remember several threads Reddit and XDA where people bought phones from Google with the assumption you could unlock the boot loader, but the buyer soon found out they could not. It was explained in the threads why this occurred (I can't remember exactly why) but it was something to do with they were sold previously returned phones as brand new.

            I've bought 6a and 6 off ebay new .
            If it says unlocked and or google edition its direct from google .
            You can find a decent price of you take you time and scope some out .