[Nexus One General] big_adventure:
The only thing you can do is compare apples-to-apples (or whatever fruit metaphor you prefer).

Here is what I have seen and quantified:

My N1 does NOT bounce in and out of signal, or have "problems" holding signal or making calls, BUT:

1. My other 3G phones (the ones I have tested) get significantly better signal in the same place, just sitting on my desk at work. When I say better, I mean 8-10dBm in general - this is a BB Bold and a Motorola Milestone. I lost my iPhone 3G, so I can't test that. I've taken friends' iPhone 3GS', but they are not on the same carrier, so I am comparing apples-to-oranges and can't really give good info.

2. The N1 seems to lose MORE signal doing the "hand-wrap" technique than those other two phones. Sitting on my desk, me Nexus gets around -87 to -91 dBm. If I hold it in my hand, wrapping around the bottom of the phone loosely, that drops to around -99 to -101dBm. With my Milestone, it'll get around -79 to -81 sitting right next to the Nexus, and wrapping my hand loosely only goes down to -83 to -87. That is a significant difference, and it shows up in speed tests, where the Milestone gets about 4.5mbps down and 2mbps up on my desk, while the Nexus gets (oddly) anywhere from 600kbps to 1.5mbps down, and 1.6 to 1.8Mbps up. Yeah, I know those numbers are weird. I suspect some kind of bug between the tower that I touch at work and the Nexus. At home (where I have much stronger 3G), the Milestone hangs on for 4.5 / 2.0, and the Nexus jumps to about 4 / 2. Of course, at home I pop on WiFi, and the Nexus smokes the Milestone, which has massive problems connecting to my router (it only connects from certain places in the apartment, and doesn't consistently hold connections). The Nexus WiFi connects from further away than others' iPhone 3GS', it holds signal better and further away, and smokes the 3GS browsing or downloading. Just SMOKES it. And my battery lasts longer doing similar tasks.

3. You will really have to see if the worse antenna reception gain is a deal-breaker for you - and the only way your going to see it is if you try it. It is not a dealbreaker for me - the places that I spend a lot of time in work fine, if not quite as well as some other phones.

4. I have one other issue related to radio services in general - if I go into one of the many dead zones at work, and spend more than 15-20 minutes there (with no signal), the radio in my phone often does not reconnect when I leave the dead zone. I have waited and monitored the situation for 2 hours before, and I'm stuck looking at an x over the signal meter. There are 2 ways to get service back - go in and out of airplane mode, or reboot the phone. Unfortunately, going in and out of airplane mode, using Ivan's DIET kernel and CM roms, reboots my phone anyway. I have no idea why, because it does NOT happen if I plug in USB and run logcat.

Oh well, this is not something that happens more than every few days, and I just keep my eye on the signal to make sure I've got it. I'll wait for another GoogTC radio update, and see if it gets better.

So -

The N1 is a fantastic handheld computer - running CM, an OC/UV kernel and Helix 0.7, it is ridiculously fast and smooth, it runs everything I throw at it with aplomb, and is beautiful, light and a generally sleek piece of equipment, and I get adequate battery life (usage - 100+ GTalk messages, 10-40 SMS, a few calls, some gaming, some music and podcasts, some hacking, some downloads and at least 30 minutes of news reading, Twittering and/or web surfing, and it always lasts the day). I could not live without multitasking on a phone, just to be able to have my updates in the background while I do something else. The screen is pretty useless in direct sunlight - worse (by far, really) than an iPhone/iPod Touch, and wireless signal is less than optimal, but that never really hinders me.

Try it! If you like it, keep it, if not, sell / return it. It's really that simple.