Is it really bad compared to other phones? A friend was over who has one (migrated from vodafone over to telecom for the $12 text)

Anyway, even outside my house holding it up it barely works. They had said that it was giving them poor coverage compared to what they had on vodafone, so I am thinking it may be faulty, but how should the R100 go compared to a known phone brand?

Im just wondering if I may be in a telecom black hole here since a data stick didnt see it, and I have lousy CDMA coverage, but in saying that I have used a 2100MHz only phone on telecom here with better coverage than the R100 was giving, so if anything the R100 supporting 850 as well should have been better or the same, not worse.