I had a call the other day from a Vodafone man trying to hook me up with a phone / internet plan they have for home businesses. I asked some questions and he said he'd get back to me next week. We're now another week down the track and I assume it's all got too hard for them - sad since we used to be with them when we had an office in town - and it might solve a signal problem for us - since they won't let their booster run on other networks. And now that Chorus are double charging us I thought it might be reasonable to swap, especially since Vodafone bought our ISP (WXC).

Anyway that's all background. My wife just had her phone dropped on the floor of the truck she was driving for a friend who has no licence. Her speakers are no longer working. Tomorrow we'll be looking to get it repaired - but our phones aren't new - so we might buy a new one. Currently the Sony's we bought on one factor: they had the best reception of any we could find.

That didn't matter until we moved our office home. People still call our cell phones even though our business line is usually diverted to a cell when we're out. Though we're only 2km from the city centre, we live on a hill in just the wrong spot for cell phone reception. Mine is usually useable, but my wife's (so much for buying two identical phones) often misses calls.

So if we are to buy a phone, we need great reception - first and foremost. We see that the top phones seem to offer that - but they're $1000 - give or take. We were hoping to find one for half that - we don't use them for much except for calls, texts and testing websites (use WIFI - not cellular data). Now ideally we'd take one home and try it out - but that isn't the way things work these days.

So I'm hoping someone here can make a suggestion on how we can find a phone with really strong reception.

Thanks