Having no exspandable storage is not practical, and I live 37 miles from the nearest tower, the closest is in boone n.c I live in Jefferson n.c...and awhat happens if your battery IS defective , but you realize it after your 14 day return/ exchange policy...so much for just replacing the battery and now you get a refub to replace a brand new phone .....best of luck ....
Technology is moving in the direction of cloud storage as much as SD card fans fight it (myself included). I have never had a battery go bad in a device so that really doesn't concern me. All phones come with a one year manufacturer's warranty. If you're someone who keeps your phone for over 3 years then I would worry about a battery dying but other than that I think it'll be fine.
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I concur...batteries are RARELY the cause of the problem. Statistically across the entire industry, of all phones returned for a so-called "bad battery", only about 10% actually show a battery that is performing at below recommended and specified levels. This means that about 90% (9 out of 10), phones returned for poor battery performance are suffering NOT from a bad battery but from symptoms of problems just like I am having, or from a bad radio that's sucking the life out of the battery, or from a software glitch that's causing the screen to not remain powered off, or due to a rogue application or service (or more than one), which are keeping the phone "awake", or from overloading the phone with so many background applications and wizards that are constantly updating such as Facebook, Twitter, Ingress, News feeds, Yahoo or other messaging feeds, etc.
As for the "location" of the tower...nothing could be more misleading. Location could be right nearby, as short a distance as 1/4 mile and you might have poor to no service, whereas someone else could be as you indicated, 37 miles away, but have relatively good service. The towers' TOPOGRAPHIC location is FAR MORE important than distance, and also what TYPE of tower, in other words what type of antennas it has.
There are "beam" antennas in various types, some are multi-element antennas arranged in a sort of long narrow "V" shape (like a rooftop TV antenna), called YAGI antennas, others are either partially or completely reflective, where the signal is actually sent backwards toward a parabola or dish/bowl, half of a tube, etc., that then reflects the focused signal, any of which can send very small signals great distances and on the receiving end the signal level you receive can look like there's "a tower nearby".
Then there are other towers which use small reflector antennas designed to "blanket" a geographic area much closer by but don't reach very far from the tower. Those latter towers are the typical tower. They're arranged in what is called a "TRIAD" configuration, three antennas on the corners of a triangle laid flat at the top of the tower...you've seen them, I'm sure. Each antenna on the triangle's corners projects out a 120+ degree horizontal pattern that may reach only 1 or 2 miles, or even only 1/8 to 1/4 mile depending on the lay of the land. The three antennas create what looks line a 3-sided oval pattern of signal. This works very well for concentrated residential and business areas since they can position multiple towers in a matrix over a wider area so that these 3-sided ovals (triads), overlap a bit on the rounded sides and essentially create an uninterrupted blanket of signal.
When the area is less-densely populated, and when it's more flat than hilly or doesn't have large buildings, bridges and other structures in the way to reflect and block signals, they will opt for the beam antenna configurations which can reach well beyond 37 miles if configured that way, and believe it or not, use less power to cover greater distances since the signal will continue to travel and the only thing to dissipate the signal is the particulates in the air over such distances. In densely populated areas they opt for more towers that project far shorter distances and blanket signal from multiple paths.
I know all too well how long distance communication can happen over radio frequencies with very little power, by using a beam configuration to concentrate that power in one direction. This, I would guess is why your "boonies" 1-tower signal is likely better than my suburban multi-tower matrix signal. My house sits on a hill, but at the bottom of the street down another hill, and my home just barely gets 4G, but if I walk to the end of my 5-house-long street...up-hill, suddenly I have 4 bars of solid 4G.
My office is as they say around here "on the main line", right next to a large SEPTA Train power Substation which sits inside a cyclone fenced in area, and has large transformers, and giant towers bringing in 3 high-voltage power sources which then feed the train lines, and the rail lines runs right behind my building. The surrounding area is densely populated with both businesses along that rail line and residential sections on either side of them. Our back of the building sits against the train station parking lot. All that interference HAS to be killing the signal for me at the office. I'll post a pic out the back window of our office tomorrow so you can see what I'm right next to.
THAT ^^^ is the problem with my battery usage, and yet the Motorolas manage to cut through all that far better than my SGS4 does now.
P.S. One 42 minute phone call later from the last screen shot of the battery and I'm now at this...
So I went from 11 hours at 28% to 13 hours at 15%, or 7% per hour while on the phone less than half that time.
And now one short call later, and I'm at 7%. 1 hour, 27 minutes of phone calls, 34 minutes, 55 seconds screen time. 93% of the battery used in 14 and a quarter hours.
