"Hijack over?
How much difference is the phone itself?
What's the best overall company for coverage?"
I do know that some phones get better reception then others, and price doesn't always figure into it. Heck, even a firmware upgrade can really make a difference alot of the time. Not sure what phone you have, but there is a website at
www.xda-developers.com that is all for enthusiast who use the HTC phones (largely smart phones or the like). For the phone I have, the ATT Fuze, someone hacked the radio firmware and made it much much better then it came from the factory, both reception and battery usage wise. So its not always the hardware even.
That said, no coverage is no coverage, and I still think even with the best phone you can find for reception that you'll find T-mobile is lacking. All of the carriers have coverage maps of where they cover, and so far the best I have seen is Verizon, especially for voice/edge (edge is their slower data coverage). ATT is a close second I think, with the rest somewhere behind. Despite it not being quite as high a coverage, Sprint has some really good deals if you want an all inclusive Voice/Data/Text plans, but if you don't use those then going with the bigger name stuff is good. I found it funny during that sales meeting I worked to find that T-mobile put the "big red monster" aka Verizon in a totally different class from everyone else as far as hardware coverage and sheer customer volume went. Guess it says something when a competitor considers you too big to compete with.
I'm getting a bit long winded here so I'll finish up. I do find that the mid range phones without the "smart" stuff often have very good reception and are better at its primary purpose, being a phone. They'll have very decent battery life and reading some reviews should see which ones get the best reception. I had a little LG flip phone before my current one, and the call quality, battery life, and reception seemed better, and it was free with the plan.
JH