[Miscellaneous Android Development] DrWu:
This has got me massively frustrated.

I have a two-year-old Moto G7 phone that I put LineageOS (v16.1) on right out of the box. Over time its wireless connectivity seems to have got weaker and weaker and now it drops calls (with a "No Service" error) more often than I'm willing to tolerate. For the longest I was writing it off to my location, thinking maybe my home office was in a "radio shadow," or there was too much RFI from the wall of electronic gizmos (CPUs, NASs, UPSs, etc) next to my computer desk.

Then I discontinued my landline phone service and bought a $30 AOSP flip phone as my "home" phone. Comparing the $30 phone side-by-side to my G7, I noticed that the flip phone always shows 4-5 bars of service and never drops a call, while the Moto 7 only occasionally gets as high as two bars, and drops calls frequently.

I had never had it happen and didn't know if it was possible for a cellular transceiver to die gradually, and it's not like I have a spare part I could install to test that theory, so I thought instead I would test the possibility that this might be being caused by some fashion of firmware degradation by switching ROMs.

I had installed microG on the LOS ROM anyway so first I tried the LOS for microG ROM v18.1. It had the same sketchy reception, only it was move involved to troubleshoot because in the G7's LOS 18.1 has 33 different options for "Preferred Network Type." The default selection wasn't working very well so I tried testing several of the others (after winnowing the selection by finding out which are not for the US market), including 'Global.'

That really got off in the weeds because several of the selections showed strong reception (4-5 bars) but the phone couldn't 'connect' under SIM status. And the ones that did appear to connect were showing very low signal strength. The best any of them would do is two bars.

When it did manage to connect, watching the signal strength under SIM status, it would bounce around from -80-ish to -105-ish and occasionally would fall to zero, at which time the Service State would show "Disconnected." So there's my dropped call with a "No Service" message.

Since microG wasn't fixing my problem I flashed a standard LOS ROM (also v18.1) but it was no better than microG LOS. So I broke down and flashed an OEM Motorola ROM, and low and behold, I've got four to five bars from anywhere in the house.

But the experience of setting up a clean install of Google's Android only reminded me how intrusive they are, and why I bothered putting up with 3-rd party ROMS to begin with.

The up-side of going back to an OEM ROM is that 1., now I know the cellular transceiver's hardware is fine, and 2., I got to see the settings the Motorola ROM defaulted to for "Preferred Network Type" and "Access Point Name." And since those selections are working a treat, that at least gives me a blueprint for the next effort at installing a 3-rd party ROM.

But long story short, has anyone else had this sort of experience with LOS/microG? And is there any hope, what else is there I could try, to get cellular reception with a 3-rd party ROM that's as strong as the OEM Motorola ROM does?