Car Kits, Wired versus BlueTooth

I have an LG VX4400 phone with U. S. Cellular in a Honda Civic. As I
elaborated in another post about reception troubles in rural Maine, the phone
works fine at work but does not work at home.

In shopping for other phones and plans I found that it is hard to find wired
car kits, most are bluetooth.

The car kit I have with an external antenna and a ³box² in the car definitely
improves the signal when driving as evidenced by the decrease in signal bars
when you take the phone out of the cradle.

Do blue tooth car kits provide this amplification and why are wired car kits
so hard to find?

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Originally Posted by Michael Bushey

I have an LG VX4400 phone with U. S. Cellular in a Honda Civic. As I
elaborated in another post about reception troubles in rural Maine, the phone
works fine at work but does not work at home.

Few people buy these kits, which contributes to their rarity.

I have a kit like this for a Nokia phone. However, I use a GSM provider (and I understand that rural GSM coverage in Maine is not great). That lets me use a cool modern phone for my normal activities and my Nokia for highway trips. (I can move the little SIM card to the phone I want to use.)

With CDMA you have to put up using your car kit phone for a long time, or you have to whine to your carrier to let you change your ESN to use another phone (and whine again to change it back), or you need to have both phones permanently activated. That reduces the utility.

That's what makes Bluetooth so great... any new phone will have Bluetooth so you can keep your kit.

As for the antenna issue... a lot of modern phones have an external antenna jack. You could get an external antenna on your car and manually attach the cable for each trip.

Another option is to get a passive antenna or a powered car repeater. Both will give you better signal with no wires. The passive antenna is a lot cheaper but it does work. A powered repeater costs a couple of hundred bucks but will work a lot better. The powered repeaters will support many calls so anyone else in your car will benefit too.