After I made a comment on another member's post about signal strength, I received a PM from someone giving me a more technical explanation of how to measure signal strength. I think my comment was something along the lines of "So you went from 2 bars to 5 bars for the laymans like myself." Regardless, it seems as though the number of bars is not a good measure of signal strength as it can vary by phone (i.e. iPhone vs Samsung vs LG, etc.). For those who want to dive into a little more, here's the article:
How to Check Your Phone'''s Signal Strength | dBm & Top Apps
For those who don't want to read the article, I'll summarize. Signal strength is measured in decibels, much like that of sound. However, it isn't the same dB as sound, but rather dBm. Don't ask what the m stands for. If you cared that much you'd have read the article. but the closer to 0 the better.
Before turning on my WeBoost Drive Reach OTR Fleet model, I was pretty constant at -110 dBm. As you can see on my phone, I had approximately 2 bars (again, arbitrary and not a good measure). This dBm measurement was not constant. It fluctuated a bit. The worst that I saw was -114 dBm and the best was probably -97 dBm. Regardless, -110 dBm seemed to be the "return to normal" after brief changes in signal strength either direction, so that's what I'm going to use as my baseline for the un-boosted signal.
After powering on the booster, it seemed to be pretty consistently -76 or -77 dBm.
So that's an overall improvement of about 34 dBm. and a 38 dBm improvement if you go from worst to best.
I found that signal strength was best when the phone was within about 3" of the internal antenna. My WeBoost owners manual calls for mounting the internal antenna 18 to 16" away from the intended use area of the phone. I did find signal improvement in this range, but not as good as the 2-3" area.
I often find myself using the Bluetooth in my truck and keeping my phone in the cupholder area of the center console. I think I'm going to permanently mount the internal antenna in the area below the AC controls.