Which cell phone has the strongest signal?
The quality of your connection is going to vary based upon terrain and your proximity to antenna sites of your provider.
Flip phones tend to have more reception problems than candybar (i.e. non-flip) phones do.
Based on what?
Flip phones have smaller antennas than a similar sized candybar phone. So two phones built by the same manufacturer, the same age, and on the same cell service will have different performance if one is a flip phone. Note that having a candybar phone doesn’t always mean you’ll get good service, either. Apparently, there’s been some kind of problem with the iPhones in England, with them getting pisspoor signal response. This seems to be a software issue and not a hardware one.
When I worked for a cellphone company, the people who complained the most about poor signal quality were always ones with flip phones.
I’ve wondered… are those tiny golden ports on the back of most phones antenna connectors? Could you duct-tape an antenna to your phone and connect it via that port?
Sort of. They’re for test and adjustment procedures. The tech plugs a dummy load into it so that the phone doesn’t radiate signal into the air, which could screw up other testing going on nearby. I don’t know if the connectors that fit these test jacks are readily available, though.
Some of them are, but I wouldn’t want to go just hooking wires up willynilly to one. You can often find kits from specialty manufacturers which will allow to hook up an external antenna to your phone.