motorola e815 versus samsung u520

I have had the e815 for a few months, and it has been a pretty good phone except the sound is just not as loud as i like. i am now trying out the samsung u520, which so far is much louder and clearer, but which phone is known to have the best reception, clarity, and less dropped calls. both are great, but wanted to know if other alltel users changed to this phone? if so, better? worse? thanks in advance...only have 15 days to decide!! Terri

I had an E815 for a year. I recently upgraded my line and purchased the new Samsung U520. I absolutely loved the phone. The size was much better than the E815, the features were great, the camera was amazing and was more like having a digital cam instead of a camera phone. The downside was the clarity was not as good as the E815. The reception wasn't nearly as good. My local Alltel retailer told me that Motorola has the best reception of all their phones. I had the same signal on each phone but the U520 was a bit staticy sounding. It has a much louder volume due to the mp3 player feature and I think this is the reason for that static. Before my 15 days were up, I wound up taking the lil thing back and purchasing the V3M. I am very very pleased with my choice. I have better reception and the staticy sound is gone. I do live in a rural area so that might have a tad to do with my reception. All in all, the lil samsung was a great phone. If you cut the volume down to about low-medium, you have better clarity. But if you are out in a crowd , which I am a good bit, thats not really an option. I hope this helps!

the e815 is highly regarded as the RF king, with the v3m coming in 2nd. I've heard good things about the samsung but I'm pretty happy w/ my v3m. I never have to turn it up more than halfway if that helps.
If you dont want/need any frills the lg ax390 is sometimes annoyingly loud and gets decent reception and still has the ability to switch down to analog if you need that (boonies)