Possible ways to improve reception?

[TheCraiggers]

After searching all over the fourms, most of the posts I've seen here about reception are about GPS or comparing the Touch favorably to the Mogul or some other smartphone, so please forgive me in advance for asking a question that has undoubtedly came up multiple times... but I only have a handfull of days to return this phone if I can't fix this...

I just got an Alltel Touch yesterday, and compared to my old Razr V3c, the reception is horrid. I get a full two bars less everywhere. I know that one phone's 4 bars is another phone's 3 bars, but my Razr almost never dropped calls from my rural house. The Touch is basically unusable at home- constantly dropping in and out of EVDO, 1X, and roaming. The company I work for is a huge Alltel house, have repeaters scattered all over the offices, and I don't even get a full signal in here. Thinking the original phone was a lemon, I just got back from Alltel with a second one and it has the same signal strength on average.

I unlocked and flashed the radio on one to 3.37.15 after upgrade to WM6.1 and the other is 3.37.10 running WM6... I was hoping for a vast improvement, but I didn't get any noticeable improvement. Does anybody have any other recommendations? Registry hacks? I've seen some things about using ##DEBUG to compare my two phones and I'll try that when I get home if I can find some instructions on what I need. Other than that, my current plan is just to flash the heck out of it until I have to take it back, brick it, or fix it.

I really wanted to love this phone, but if I can't even keep a connection at my house for 20 seconds its future doesn't bode well. I'm desperate for some kind of improvement.