Question : long range or well connecting cell phone recommendations

so . . . . you can't know it all, right?  I know next to nothing about cell phones other than they make calls when you hit the button.  

It appears, however, i've been blessed with the ability to pick bad phones.  My phone doesn't work well at my house yet many guests have a great connection.  

I live in a very rural area and the closest cell tower of any provider is about 2 miles as the crow flies.  we only service AT&T and Verizon in the area: I have AT&T.

I have a samsung propel and it is garbage for connection.  My wife and I have had 3 phones each while here and all of them weren't much better.  Also, I installed a cell-phone booster at the hospital I work for and everyone has better connection except for me.  Some of the girls in the business office have AT&T like me and it still works fine for them but my phone is less than good.

What would you recommend?  I want something that has good, solid, connection and a QWERTY type keypad (touchscreen ok).   I am more interested in call quality so receiving sensitivity is just as important as transmitting power.

Would I be better off going to a smartphone?  I had and ipaq for a while and it wasn't much better.

Suggestions?

Answer : long range or well connecting cell phone recommendations

Yes, I see this all the time; an ISP can route RFC1918 space (Private space) in their network all they want. They (Bright House) can also try and advertise rfc1918 space to their upstream providers (Transit peers) via BGP but will get filtered and stop there. As long as you have a firewall I would not worry about. What you are seeing is perfectly normal and basic routing principles.

Billy